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Wisdom Soup
Take a pound of beef, a pound of veal, and a pound of mutton, cut into pieces; put the meat into two gallons of water with an old cock cut into pieces, a piece of carrot, the upper crust of a penny loaf toasted very crisp, a little bundle of sweet herbs, an onion, a tea-spoonful of black and one of white pepper, four or five blades of mace, and four cloves; cover it and stew over a slow fire until the liquor is reduced one half, then strain it off and put it into a clean saucepan with two or three large spoonfuls of raspings clean sifted, half an ounce of truffles and morels, three or four heads of celery cut small, an ox's palate first boiled tender and cut into small pieces, a few cocks'-combs, and a few of the little hearts of young savoys; cover close, and simmer the whole very softly over a slow fire for two hours; then have ready a French roll fried, and a few forcemeat balls fried, put them in your dish and pour in the soup. You may boil a leg of veal, and a leg of beef, and as many fine things as you like, but this is likely to be rich and high enough. You may leave out the cocks'-combs, palates, and truffles, etc., if these are not liked--it will be good soup without them; and if you would have your soup very clear do not put in the raspings. Vermicelli is good in it--an ounce put in just before you take it up; let it boil four or five minutes. You may make this soup of beef or veal alone, just as you fancy. A leg of beef will do without either veal, mutton, or fowl.
An eighteenth-century-style rich broth carried into a Victorian reference book. The technique is straightforward — a long reduction followed by a garnish simmer — but half the ingredients need translating and several need a butcher's counter.
- The hinge: reduce by half before anything else goes inThe first stew is a stock, not a soup, and it must lose half its volume (roughly 9 litres down to 4.5) before straining. If you shorten this, the garnish stage has nothing to cling to and the whole thing tastes thin no matter how many trimmings you add.
- Two gallonsAn imperial gallon is 4.5 litres, so this starts with about 9 litres of water to 3 lb of butcher's meat plus a fowl. Reducing that by half over a genuinely low flame takes several hours, and you will need a stockpot of at least 12 quarts.
- An old cockA mature rooster, valued for gelatine and flavour rather than tenderness. A stewing hen or boiling fowl is the nearest thing; failing that, use 3-4 lb of chicken wings, backs and feet, which give the same body.
- RaspingsDried crust grated to a coarse powder — the crumbs a baker scraped off overbaked loaves. Sifted breadcrumbs from oven-dried crust do the job. Note the recipe's own advice: they thicken and cloud, so leave them out if you want a clear soup.
- The penny loaf crustSimply the top crust of a small white loaf, toasted hard. It most likely serves to darken the stock and add a faint roasted note, much the job a browned onion half does now.
- Ox palate and cocks'-combsBoth need ordering from a specialist butcher and both need long preliminary cooking; the palate is boiled tender and peeled before it is cut up. The recipe explicitly permits omitting them, along with the truffles, and the soup stands without.
- Truffles and morelsHalf an ounce is about 15 g, covering the truffles and morels together. Both were sold dried and bottled as well as fresh; dried morels, soaked and their soaking liquor strained in, are the practical modern choice.
- SavoysSavoy cabbage. Use only the pale inner hearts, quartered, added with the celery for the two-hour simmer — outer leaves turn sulphurous over that time.
- Slow fire, and yield"Simmer very softly" means barely trembling, and the recipe says to keep it covered close. As written this fills a large tureen and would serve ten or so as a first course.
"Wisdom soup" belongs to a family of eighteenth-century English rich broths — soups built on several kinds of meat at once and finished with expensive trimmings — and the wording here is close to Hannah Glasse's mid-1700s manner. The origin of the name is not recorded. What makes it interesting is the running commentary at the end, where the writer dismantles the recipe — leave out the combs, drop the truffles, use a leg of beef alone. That is the voice of a period when a single dish had to serve both a household with an ox palate to spare and one without, and when cocks'-combs and palates were ordinary butcher's goods rather than curiosities.