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Savory Potato Soup
Put over the fire a good marrowbone in 3 pints of cold water. Add a small sliced carrot, a stalk or two of celery, and a grated onion. Boil slowly down to one-half the original quantity.
Set aside until cold; remove the fat and take out the bones, rub the vegetables through a colander back into the soup. Bring quickly to a boil and pour upon your mashed potato gradually. Turn into a double boiler, and when it becomes hot add a great spoonful of chopped parsley. Have a cupful of hot water, in which a pinch of soda has been dropped, in another saucepan. Stir into this a teaspoonful of butter, which has been rubbed in 1 of corn starch.
Cook three minutes, add to the potato soup; Stir briskly for half a minute and put into the tureen.
A marrowbone broth thickened with mashed potato, finished with a small butter-and-cornstarch binding. The original omits the amount of potato and any salt, so both are left to the cook's judgment.
- The hingePour the boiling stock onto the mashed potato in a thin stream while stirring, not the potato into the stock. Reversing it, or adding the liquid all at once, gives you lumps that no amount of beating will disperse.
- Quantity of potatoNone is specified. About 2 cups of plain mashed potato, from roughly 1 lb of floury potatoes, suits the pint and a half of finished stock; more gives a puree stiff enough to stand a spoon in.
- Reducing the stockThree pints down to a pint and a half at a bare simmer takes roughly 1½ to 2 hours. Keep it slow and uncovered; the recipe itself says to boil slowly, and a hard boil clouds the broth.
- The marrowboneAsk a butcher for cut beef shank or femur sections; they are often sold frozen for stock or for dogs. There is little meat, so the soup takes its savor from marrow and gelatin, which is why the recipe's 'set aside until cold' matters: cold fat lifts off in a sheet.
- "A great spoonful"A heaped tablespoon. For the finishing paste, read the second line as 1 teaspoon butter rubbed into 1 teaspoon cornstarch.
- The pinch of sodaA period habit; the reasoning usually given was that soda softened hard water, though what it is doing for the potato here is not stated. A pinch means well under ⅛ teaspoon; more than that can make the soup slippery and faintly soapy. It can be left out entirely with no loss.
- Double boilerNot fussiness. Potato puree scorches on direct heat almost instantly and the burnt taste carries through the whole tureen. A heavy pan over low heat with constant stirring will do if you have no insert.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is called for anywhere. Salt the stock lightly as it reduces, then correct at the end; unsalted potato puree absorbs a surprising amount.
- YieldAbout 1½ quarts once the potato is in — four generous servings as a first course.