Home › Soup Stock › Hasty Soup
Hasty Soup
Mince together a pound of lean beef, mutton, or veal, a small turnip, a small carrot, half an ounce of celery, the white part of a medium-sized leek, or a very small onion. Put into a deep saucepan with 3 pints of cold water. When the soup boils, take off the scum and season with salt and pepper. It can be served with or without straining, and should be cooked only about half an hour. A little catsup is an addition.
A stock built for speed: the meat and vegetables are minced so finely that thirty minutes of gentle cooking extracts most of what an all-day stockpot would. A few notes on quantities and technique.
- The hinge is the minceThe short cooking time only works because the meat and vegetables are cut small enough to give up their flavour fast. Chop or pulse the beef to a coarse ground-meat texture and dice the vegetables to a few millimetres. Cubed meat treated the same way will yield hot water with a faint savour.
- Cold water, then a bare simmerStarting in cold water draws out soluble protein, which rises as the scum you are told to remove. Once skimmed, hold it at a lazy simmer rather than a rolling boil; hard boiling emulsifies the fat back in and clouds the broth.
- MeasuresIf the pints are American, three pints is six cups of water; on imperial measure (20 fl oz to the pint) it is nearer seven and a half. Some liquid goes to skimming and evaporation, but half an hour at a bare simmer will not reduce it far. Half an ounce of celery is a single short piece of one rib, no more.
- Catsup meant something elseDepending on the book's date, "catsup" may mean mushroom or walnut rather than tomato: a thin, dark, salty condiment closer to a mild Worcestershire. A teaspoon of mushroom ketchup or soy at the end gives that savoury lift; tomato ketchup will sweeten the soup instead.
- Season at the end as wellThe recipe salts early, which is sensible for extraction, but half an hour of reduction concentrates it. Taste and adjust once the pot is off the heat.
- Strained or notLeft unstrained it eats as a thin, brothy mince soup, which is what "hasty" implies. Strained through a fine sieve it becomes a light stock for a sauce or a cup of clear broth; press the solids firmly, as they hold much of the flavour.
- YieldTwo generous bowls served unstrained as a light supper with bread, or something over a quart of broth once strained.
Recipes titled "hasty" — hasty pudding, hasty soup — belong to a tradition of dishes named for the one thing the cook did not have, which was time. Finely divided meat exposes far more surface to the water, so a half hour extracts a good deal more quickly than a whole joint would. A fast version that used a single pound of cheap lean meat was a practical answer for the day nothing had been set to simmer that morning. The mention of catsup as an optional addition is a period marker in itself — bottled mushroom and walnut catsups were common pantry items before tomato ketchup took the name for itself.