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Mock-Turtle Bean Soup
Make like white-bean soup, adding, at the last, a tablespoonful of butter which has been rubbed in a tablespoonful of browned flour. When the soup has boiled about a minute, add a glass of sherry. Peel and slice a lemon as thin as possible, place in the tureen with 3 tablespoonfuls of hard-boiled eggs which have been cut into dice. This is a very good imitation of mock-turtle soup.
A second-hand imitation: the bean soup stands in for the calf's head, which itself stood in for turtle. The seasoning at the end does the real work, so treat the sherry, lemon and egg as the recipe rather than as garnish.
- The baseYou need the book's white-bean soup first — dried white beans simmered soft with aromatics and salt pork or stock, then passed through a sieve. The recipe gives no quantity, so scale the finishing steps below to however much smooth, fairly thick puree you have.
- Browned flourThis means flour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until it is the colour of cinnamon, then worked into softened butter. It thickens far less than raw flour but supplies the dark, faintly bitter note that reads as "turtle." Toast a few tablespoons at once and keep the surplus.
- A glass of sherryA wine glass in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz; a sherry glass rather less. Read it as roughly a quarter-cup and adjust to the amount of soup you have. Use a dry amontillado or oloroso, not cream sherry.
- Only a minuteThe brief boil after the sherry goes in looks deliberate: long enough to knock back the raw alcohol, short enough to keep the wine's aroma. Don't reduce it much further.
- Hard-boiled eggThree tablespoons is roughly one egg, diced small. Diced egg and egg balls were among the standard mock-turtle garnishes; add it to the tureen at the moment of serving, as it toughens if it sits in the hot soup.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity, so the number of servings depends on how much bean puree you start with. Check the seasoning at the end; bean puree absorbs a surprising amount of salt.