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Crowned Potato Soup
Peel and quarter 12 potatoes. Fry the potatoes together with a sliced onion in a soup-pot in which 3 tablespoonfuls of beef dripping have been placed. When the potatoes have browned add 2 quarts of water, and simmer until the potatoes have become soft. Rub through a colander, return to the pot, and thicken with 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour rubbed to a paste with a great spoonful of butter. Stir until smooth. Season with salt and pepper and add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. This soup is very good.
A plain browned-potato purée thickened with a dark roux paste. The browning is the whole point of the dish and the step most likely to be rushed.
- Brown the potatoes properlyFry the quartered potatoes and onion over medium heat until there are real brown edges, 15-20 minutes, turning only occasionally. Without that colour the soup tastes of nothing but boiled potato and water.
- Potato quantityThe recipe gives no sizes. Twelve potatoes of the small to medium sort common in period kitchens would come to something like 3 lb; with 2 quarts of water that should give a fairly thick pur\to it looser.
- Beef drippingRendered beef fat, saved from a roast. Butter, lard, or a neutral oil all work, though dripping gives the savoury depth the recipe is built on. Extra virgin olive oil is less suited to sustained browning heat.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until it is the colour of cinnamon, then cooled. It thickens less than raw flour and tastes nutty rather than pasty. Toast a small batch and keep what you do not use.
Potato soup thickened with a browned flour paste is the sort of plain household cooking that fills the soup sections of American compilation cookbooks around 1900, and the beef dripping, single onion and parsley finish are consistent with that thrifty tradition, where fat saved from a roast was a kitchen staple rather than a luxury. What "crowned" refers to here is not stated in the text; in books of this type such names often point to a garnish crowning the surface of the served soup, and the only candidate the surviving text offers is the chopped parsley. Compilations of this kind were assembled from many contributors, which may explain a dish carrying an ornamental name while the method itself is as economical as possible.