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Turnip and Potato Soup
Dissolve two ounces of butter in a stewpan, and fry in it two large onions, sliced, till they are brightly browned. Pour over them two quarts of stock made from bones or from the liquor in which meat has been boiled, and add half a dozen sliced turnips, half a dozen mealy potatoes, and three or four crusts of bread, together with a bay-leaf and a few sticks of celery if liked. Simmer all gently together till the vegetables are quite soft, rub the soup through a fine sieve, and season with pepper and salt. Let it boil up once more, and serve very hot. Serve toasted sippets on a separate dish. This soup is not likely to keep good more than a day or two. Time, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 3d. per pint, exclusive of the stock. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons.
A thrifty purée soup built on leftover meat liquor, thickened with bread rather than cream or flour. Nothing here is dangerous or obscure; a few quantities and one technique need translating.
- The onions are the flavour"Brightly browned" means a genuine deep gold, not softened and pale — this is the only browning in the dish and the soup will taste flat without it. Allow 15-20 minutes over medium heat, stirring, and scrape the fond into the stock.
- Quantities in weightSix turnips and six potatoes is vague by modern standards; something around 1½ lb (700 g) of each, peeled, is a reasonable guess. Two quarts in a British book is imperial measure — roughly 2.3 litres.
- "Mealy" potatoesFloury varieties — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward. Waxy potatoes will not break down as readily, and the sieved soup will be less smooth.
- Turnips, not swedesThe book means small white turnips, peppery and slightly bitter. If you use rutabaga (swede) the soup will be sweeter and more orange; reduce the quantity a little to keep it in balance.
- Bread crusts as thickenerThree or four crusts of a plain white loaf; the recipe gives no weight. They break down in the sieving and add body, though with this much floury potato they are not the only thickener.
- Sieve or blenderRubbing through a fine sieve gives a silkier result than a blender, but a stick blender followed by a single pass through a sieve gets very close in a fraction of the time. Remove the bay leaf and any tough celery strings first.
- The stated timeTwo and a half hours presumably covers frying, simmering and sieving. The vegetables will be soft in 30-40 minutes; there is little benefit to longer cooking once they collapse.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of toasted bread, served alongside rather than floated in, so they stay crisp. Modern croutons do the same job.
- Yield and keepingTen to twelve, as the recipe states. The warning about keeping reflects an unrefrigerated larder — covered and chilled it will keep somewhat longer.
This is kitchen economy written down: the stock comes from bones or from "the liquor in which meat has been boiled", the thickening from stale crusts, and the whole thing costs threepence a pint. Cassell's was first issued in the 1870s and reprinted in expanded form for decades after. Purée soups of root vegetables bound with bread belong to an older European tradition than roux-thickened or cream soups — bread was widely used as a thickener in English and French cookery before flour became usual — and turnips were a cheap winter vegetable of the British kitchen garden, grown for livestock as much as for the table.