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POTATO SOUP (another way) (Wash and peel ten or twelve)
Wash and peel ten or twelve large potatoes. Cut them into slices, and put them into a stewpan with one large onion sliced, four ounces of butter, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg. Let them steam for two or three minutes, then pour over them two quarts of white stock, or the liquid in which meat has been boiled, and let the whole simmer gently until the potatoes are soft. Press them with a wooden spoon through a fine sieve, return the puree to the soup, and stir it over the fire until it is quite hot. Add half a pint of cream or new milk, and serve; sending fried crusts to table on a separate dish. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 5d. per quart, exclusive of the stock, if made with milk. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A straightforward potato purée soup that needs almost no translation, though the quantities and the sieving step benefit from comment.
- Scale and yieldTen or twelve large potatoes with two quarts of stock is a very large pot — the book says eight to ten servings and means it. Halving everything gives about four generous bowls.
- Potato choiceUse a floury variety (russet, Maris Piper, King Edward) so the flesh breaks down and passes through a sieve easily. Waxy potatoes stay stubborn and can turn gluey under pressure.
- "Sweating," not steamingThe two or three minutes in butter before the stock goes in is a sweat: keep the heat low and the lid on so the onion softens without colouring. Colour here muddies the pale finish the recipe is after.
- White stockA light, unbrowned stock made from veal or chicken bones. Any mild chicken stock works; the alternative offered — water from boiling meat — can be salty, so hold back on added salt until the end.
- Half a pint of creamTen fluid ounces in imperial measure, roughly 1¼ US cups. Add it off the boil and reheat gently; a hard boil after the dairy goes in can split the soup.
- Sieve or blenderPressing through a fine sieve with a wooden spoon gives the silkiest result and is still worth doing. A food mill or a brief blitz with a stick blender is faster, but avoid a high-speed blender or long processing, which makes potato starch turn to paste.
- TimingThe stated hour and a half presumably covers the whole operation, sieving included. The actual simmer is 20 to 30 minutes, until the slices collapse against the spoon.
- Fried crustsBread crusts fried in butter or dripping — croûtons in all but name. Served separately so they stay crisp rather than dissolving in the tureen.
Potato soups multiply through Victorian cookery books because the ingredients were cheap and the technique forgiving: the book quotes fivepence a quart when made with milk, and expressly exclusive of the stock, which put it within reach of a modest household. The distinguishing feature of the recipe as written is that it is built on white stock — the pale, unbrowned veal or poultry broth that underpinned much of nineteenth-century English and French-influenced cooking — with the frugal alternative of meat-boiling liquor offered in the same breath. Sieving vegetables to a purée through a hair or wire sieve was standard practice long before mechanical blenders. The grated nutmeg is characteristic too: it appears frequently in British white sauces and creamed dishes of the era, a survival of a much older taste for warm spice in savoury cooking.