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Spring Soup, Early
Take a knuckle of veal chopped in pieces, a quarter of a pound of lean ham, a quart of whole white peas, two or three turnips, a leek, and a little celery. Cut these into small pieces, and put to them four quarts of soft water. Boil till the meat has parted with all its juices and the peas have become soft. Then take out the meat and vegetables, and pulp the peas through a sieve. Season with pepper and salt to taste. Take a bunch of asparagus cut small to resemble green peas, the hearts of two or three cabbage-lettuces, and some green mint chopped fine. Stew these in the soup till the vegetables become tender, taking care to keep them of a good colour and not to permit them to remain too long upon the fire. Should the soup prove too thick, put to it some good broth, and if too thin, add a little flour and water. Should it not appear sufficiently green, pound a handful of spinach, and put the juice, when properly strained, into the soup, but it must not be boiled, for that would destroy the green colour of the spinach. Observe that when asparagus is meant to resemble green peas, care must be taken not to subject it to too much heat, it being a vegetable that soon becomes soft and loses its colour. A considerable degree of attention is required on the part of the cook, in regard to the management of the asparagus.
A two-stage soup: a long-simmered veal and dried pea base, then a quick green garnish added at the last minute. Nearly everything that can go wrong here goes wrong in that second stage.
- The hinge: the asparagusCut it into short lengths the size of peas and give it only a few minutes in the finished soup, until barely tender. The original repeats this warning twice because overcooked asparagus turns olive-grey and mushy, and the whole conceit of the dish is that it looks like a soup of fresh green peas.
- Knuckle of vealA veal shank, sawn across into rounds by the butcher, bone and marrow included. It is a gelatine source rather than a meat course. A 2-3 lb piece suits this quantity; ask for it cut, since a home knife will not do it.
- Whole white peasDried white or yellow split-adjacent field peas, not fresh peas. A quart dry is roughly 1 3/4 lb. Soaking overnight cuts the simmering time considerably, though the recipe assumes none.
- Soft waterLow-mineral water, which was thought to soften dried pulses faster. In hard-water areas this genuinely does matter; filtered or bottled water helps old peas break down. Four quarts is 16 cups.
- Cabbage-lettucesButterhead or a firm romaine. Use only the pale hearts, shredded, and add them with the asparagus; they wilt in two or three minutes.
- Spinach greeningThe old cook's colouring agent: raw spinach pounded, the juice strained and stirred in off the heat. Heat sets the chlorophyll brown, hence the instruction not to boil it. A blender and a fine sieve do the pounding in seconds; expect a modest tint, not a vivid one.
- Thickening"A little flour and water" means a thin slurry, whisked in and simmered a minute or two so the raw starch cooks out. The original places this adjustment after the greens have been added, but it is easier to judge and cook out the flour at the base stage.
- Timing the baseCount on two to three hours of gentle simmering for the shank and peas, longer if the peas are old or unsoaked, skimming the grey foam in the first twenty minutes. The meat and root vegetables are taken out and only the peas pulped through the sieve, though the shank meat is worth eating separately.
- YieldFour quarts of liquid, reduced somewhat, serves eight to ten as a first course. It is best finished and eaten the same day; reheating destroys the green.
The "early" in the title is doing real work: it is a soup for the weeks when the first asparagus, lettuce hearts and mint appear but garden peas have not yet arrived, so dried white peas from the winter store carry the body and the young vegetables supply the colour. The trick of cutting asparagus tips to imitate green peas belongs to a long tradition of nineteenth-century kitchen illusion, and the spinach juice added off the fire is a standard Victorian and earlier French method of greening a soup or sauce without an artificial colouring. The reliance on a veal knuckle for gelatine is equally of its period: before commercial stock, a knuckle or calf's foot was what gave a soup the body and slight sheen that modern cooks get from a reduced stock.