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Red Bean Puree
Soak a pint of red kidney beans in cold water for several hours. Drain, and put them in a saucepan with enough white broth or stock to well cover them. Cook slowly until very soft; mash and rub them through a sieve. Add 2 or 3 slices of salt pork (diced), 2 onions, a carrot, salt and pepper, and a bouquet of herbs. Pour over them a quart of good stock, or a pint of stock and a pint of water, and simmer together for an hour. Strain; add half a glass of claret. Heat, and serve with croutons.
A two-stage puree: the beans are cooked and sieved first, then the puree is simmered again with pork and aromatics and strained. Read the whole method before starting, since the vegetables go in after the beans have already been passed through the sieve.
- The hingeThe beans must be genuinely falling apart before you sieve them, or nothing will pass through and you will be left scraping skins. Allow 1 1/2 to 2 hours of slow cooking, and add hot stock if the level drops below the beans.
- A pint of beansDry beans were measured by volume; a pint of red kidney beans is roughly 13 to 14 oz, about 375 to 400 g, and will swell to something near a quart once soaked. Soak overnight in the refrigerator rather than "several hours" on the counter.
- White broth or stockWhite broth meant an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, made from bones that were not roasted first. Unsalted chicken stock is the closest thing on a supermarket shelf; salt at the end, since the salt pork also seasons the pot.
- Salt porkTwo or three slices is perhaps 2 to 3 oz diced, depending how thick the slices are. Unsmoked salt pork or pancetta is right; bacon will push the soup toward smoke, which this recipe does not want.
- Bouquet of herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stems, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme tied with string or bundled in cheesecloth so it lifts out cleanly at the straining stage.
- Half a glass of claretClaret is dry red Bordeaux, and a "glass" in period cookery is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so half a glass is on the order of 1 to 2 tablespoons. The quantity is genuinely imprecise; add it a spoonful at a time and stop when the flavour lifts rather than turns sour. The recipe reheats the soup after the wine goes in, so warm it through without boiling hard.
- Straining twiceThe second straining removes the pork dice, onion, carrot and herbs, leaving a smooth puree. A blender before the final strain saves a great deal of pushing, and a fine mesh sieve gives a better texture than a colander.
- Consistency and yieldFinished, this should coat a spoon lightly, like heavy cream; thin with stock if it has tightened. Expect roughly 1 1/2 to 2 quarts after the hour's simmer, serving about six as a first course. Fry the croutons in butter or the rendered pork fat and add them at the table so they stay crisp.
Purees of this kind are common in turn-of-the-century soup cookery, where a great many entries differ only in which pulse or vegetable is sieved: red bean, lentil, split pea, chestnut, turnip. The technique and much of the vocabulary are French, from the bouquet of herbs to the white stock. Kidney beans were cheap and shelf-stable, and a pint of dried beans with a few ounces of salt pork stretches a quart of stock into a substantial course. A splash of claret to finish a heavy pulse soup turns up in other recipes of the period as well; here it goes in before the soup is reheated rather than off the heat.