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Vegetable Soup, Winter
Cut an onion into thin slices, and fry it in two ounces of butter until it is lightly browned. Put with it half a pound of mixed vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, leeks, and celery cut up small, and stir all briskly over the fire with a wooden spoon for ten minutes. Add a quarter of a pound of soaked split peas, a small bunch of sweet herbs, a clove, a little salt and cayenne, and two quarts of stock. Simmer all gently together for two hours. Strain the soup, and serve with toasted sippets. Three or four ripe tomatoes peeled and sliced may, if liked, be stewed with the soup. When a plain family soup is required, fry the vegetables, put the peas with them, and boil till quite tender. Rub them through a sieve or strainer, and mix a spoonful or two of oatmeal with the pulp to form a liquid paste. Stir this into the boiling stock, let it boil for ten minutes, and it will be ready for use.
A straightforward winter pottage of root vegetables and split peas, thickened either by long simmering or by a sieved purée bound with oatmeal. The only real decisions are how far to strain it and what stock to use.
- Quantities and yieldTwo quarts of stock (imperial, so about 80 fl oz or 10 US cups) will give roughly six to eight servings. Half a pound of mixed vegetables and a quarter pound of split peas is a modest ratio, so expect a light, brothy soup rather than a thick puree unless you take the second method.
- Soaking the peas"Soaked split peas" means several hours or overnight in cold water. Modern split peas are cleaner and often soften in 45 to 60 minutes without soaking, but soaked peas break down more completely, which is what makes the strained version work.
- StrainingThe first method says only to strain the soup; whether that means passing off the liquid or pressing the vegetables through is left open. If you want body, press the vegetables and peas through a sieve or blend them back in, which is close to what the "plain family soup" variant does.
- Sweet herbsUsually read as parsley and thyme with a bay leaf, tied with string. Tie it or it will clog the sieve. One whole clove for two quarts is enough; more will dominate.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of bread, toasted or fried in butter, scattered over the soup at the table. Croutons in all but name.
- The oatmeal thickeningUse fine or medium oatmeal, not rolled oats, and slacken it with cold liquid before it goes into the pan or it will lump. The ten minutes' boiling the recipe gives is enough to cook out the raw cereal taste.
- StockThe book assumes a household meat stock. Vegetable stock works and keeps the dish meatless, but taste and season at the end, as the original's 'little salt' assumes a well-seasoned stock underneath.
- CayenneA very small pinch. The recipe treats it as background warmth rather than detectable heat, and the soup is meant to taste of vegetables and peas.
This soup belongs to the months when the kitchen garden offered little beyond roots, leeks and stored pulses. The technique of frying the vegetables in butter before wetting them is the key to the recipe's character: browning the onion and sweating the roots for ten minutes builds a depth of flavour that plain boiling in stock will not give. The oatmeal binding in the "plain family" version marks the dish's other lineage, the thickened pottages of British and Scottish domestic cooking, where oats did the work that flour, cream or a long reduction would do in a wealthier kitchen. The tomatoes are offered as an optional variation, and the recipe still treats them as something to be stewed into the pot rather than a base in their own right.