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Cranberry Soup
Boil 2 quarts of cranberries in a quart of water until the skins crack, then rub through a fine sieve, dilute with boiling water, and thicken with a little fine tapioca. It may be seasoned with a very little salt and sugar to taste, and flavored with orange or lemon peel, or stick cinnamon and whole cloves boiled with the berries. Served hot with little light suet dumplings.
A sweet-tart fruit soup of the Northern European kind, thickened with tapioca and served hot as a first course. The original leaves the dilution and sweetening to the cook's judgment, so taste as you go.
- QuantitiesTwo quarts of cranberries is roughly 2 lb, or about two and a half of the standard 12 oz bags. Cooked with a quart of water and then diluted to taste, it will make something like 3 quarts of finished soup, depending how far you thin it.
- Cook only until the skins burstCranberries pop within 8 to 12 minutes of a simmer. Longer boiling does not improve the flavor and drives off the fresh fruit aroma that makes the soup worth eating.
- SievingA food mill or a fine-mesh strainer with a stiff spatula does what the old fine sieve did. Push the pulp through and discard skins and seeds; a blender alone leaves the soup gritty.
- How much to diluteThe instruction "dilute with boiling water" is open-ended. Start with a pint of water to the strained pulp and add more until it pours like heavy cream rather than sauce.
- Tapioca"Fine tapioca" means the small pearl or granulated kind, not modern instant. Allow about 2 tablespoons per quart of soup, sprinkled in while the soup barely simmers, and give it 10 to 15 minutes to swell and clear. Whisk as you add it or it settles into a lump on the bottom.
- Sugar and saltCranberries are aggressively acid, and modern palates will likely want more sugar than "a very little" suggests; some cooks go as far as half a cup per quart, but the original leaves it to taste, so add it in stages. The salt is there to sharpen the fruit, not to be tasted.
- Whole spicesThe original gives a choice: citrus peel, or stick cinnamon and whole cloves boiled with the berries. Whichever you use, fish the whole pieces out before sieving. Cloves go a long way at this volume; too many turn the soup medicinal.
- The suet dumplingsSmall plain flour-and-suet dumplings. The recipe does not say where to cook them; poaching them separately in water or broth and dropping them into the bowls keeps the soup from clouding. Beef suet is a butcher's request now; shredded packaged suet or chilled grated butter stands in.