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CHAPTER X: Soup
CREAM - OF - PEA SOUP Press half a cup of peas and the liquid in which they were cooked through the sieve. Melt a tablespoonful of butter; add a tablespoonful of flour and one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and black pepper and cook until frothy in the butter; add one cup of milk and cook, stirring constantly, until smooth and boiling; add the pea puree and stir until smoothly blended and again boiling. If too thick add a little hot milk or broth with additional salt and pepper and serve at once. If canned peas be used, add to them half a teaspoonful of sugar. Canned or fresh peas may be substituted for the corn in the "Cream-of-Corn Soup." These soups provide a nutritious luncheon. CREAM - OF - CORN SOUP (TO SERVE FOUR) (Formula with variations) Press enough canned or fresh corn, chopped fine, through a sieve to yield one-third a cup of puree. Beat one egg and the yolk of another; add one-fourth a teaspoonful, each, of salt and black pepper, three tablespoonfuls of cream and the puree. Mix thoroughly and turn into four buttered timbale moulds. Set these in a pan on several folds of paper, surround with water at the boiling point, and let cook in a slow oven until firm. Serve hot, one in each plate of soup. Slice half an onion fine; add a sprig of parsley (fresh or dried) and let cook in two tablespoonfuls of butter until the onion is softened and yellowed; then add one cup of the chopped corn and a pint of broth or hot water (broth from chicken giblets and bones is good) and let simmer ten or fifteen minutes. Pour the liquid through a sieve and pound the corn with a pestle, then press as much of the corn as is possible through a sieve, diluting it, meanwhile, with the hot liquid; then reheat the puree. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter; in it cook two tablespoonfuls of flour, half a teaspoonful of salt and a little pepper, then add one cup of milk; stir until thickened and boiling, then add the puree and one-fourth a cup of cream. DELICATE CELERY SOUP 1 large slice of onion 3 tablespoonfuls of flour 3 stalks of celery 1 teaspoonful of salt 3 cups of milk 1/2 teaspoonful of pepper 3 tablespoonfuls of butter 1 cup of cream Break the stalks of celery in pieces and pound these in a wooden bowl; add to the onion and milk and set to cook in a double boiler. Let cook twenty minutes. In the meantime melt the butter and in it cook the flour and seasonings; add the cream and stir until the sauce thicknes and boils, then strain into it the celery and milk.
CREAM - OF - TOMATO SOUP 1 cup of tomato puree Additional seasoning, if needed 2 cups of thin white sauce CREAM - OF - CHICKEN SOUP 1/2 cup of chicken puree 1 cup of thin cream sauce 2 cups of chicken broth sea- 1 yolk of egg with 2 table- soned with vegetables spoonfuls of cream CREAM - OF - STRING BEAN SOUP 1/2 cup of string bean puree slice of onion, and half a 1 1/2 cups thin white sauce stalk of celery 1/2 cup of milk scalded with a Salt and pepper as needed CREAM - OF - SPINACH SOUP 1/4 cup of spinach puree slice of onion and 3 slices 1 1/2 cups of thin white sauce of carrot 1/2 cup of milk scalded with a Salt and pepper as needed CREAM - OF - OYSTER SOUP 1 cup of oysters (half a pint) 1 1/2 cups of thin white sauce 1/2 cup of cold water 1/2 cup of hot cream Pour the cold water over the oysters; take each oyster in the fingers, rinse in the water and remove bits of shell that may be attached to it. Chop the oysters fine and press as much as possible through a sieve. Scald whatever does not pass the sieve with the water (strained through a cloth to remove sand) and add to the puree; stir the whole into the hot sauce and add the cream with salt and pepper as needed.
This is a formula chapter rather than a set of fixed recipes: one thin white sauce, one vegetable puree, and a list of variations. Once the base is understood the rest follows.
- What "thin white sauce" means hereIn this period a thin white sauce is one tablespoon each of butter and flour to one cup of milk; medium is two of each, thick three. The cream-of-pea recipe spells the proportion out, and the abbreviated variations below assume it.
- Slow ovenFor the corn timbales, a slow oven is usually reckoned at about 300 to 325F. The custards sit in a water bath on folded paper (the paper insulates the mould bottoms from the hot pan) and are firm when a knife inserted at the edge comes out clean; expect somewhere around half an hour for small moulds.
- Timbale mouldsSmall straight-sided metal or ceramic moulds of about 1/3 cup. Buttered ramekins, dariole moulds or even a muffin tin work; unmould each one into a soup plate and ladle the soup around it.
- Sieve and pestle, or a blenderThe pounding in a wooden bowl and pressing through a sieve exist because there was no other way to break down corn kernels or celery fibre. A blender does the work in seconds, though for corn and celery you should still strain afterward — the hulls and strings are what the sieve was removing.
- Oysters need heatThe oyster soup adds raw chopped oysters and their liquor to hot sauce with no further cooking. Bring the finished soup to a bare simmer and hold it there a minute or two before serving; oysters eaten warm but not properly heated carry a genuine Vibrio risk, and past a couple of minutes they toughen anyway.
- Canned peas and the sugarEarly canned peas were duller and starchier than the modern product. The half teaspoon of sugar was compensation; with frozen peas, which are sweeter than most fresh ones at market, leave it out.
- YieldsThe corn soup is marked for four; the rest vary in volume, from about a cup and a half for the pea soup up to roughly four cups for the celery. Halving the cream-of-celery is straightforward since it is built on three cups of milk plus a cup of cream.
- Cream-of-chicken pureeThe "1/2 cup of chicken puree" means cooked chicken meat pounded and sieved, not stock; the broth is listed separately. The egg yolk beaten with cream is a liaison: temper it with a little hot soup, stir it in off the heat, and do not let it boil afterward or it will curdle.
Cooking for Two belongs to the wave of early twentieth-century domestic-science cookery that came out of the Boston Cooking School tradition, and this chapter shows the method plainly: teach one formula — the white sauce — and hang a dozen dishes on it. Cream soups suited the small household well, since half a cup of leftover peas or a little corn became a course. The corn custards floated in the soup are a timbale, a French borrowing that American cooking schools of the period took up with enthusiasm; the technique also demonstrated egg coagulation, a lesson these books were always half-teaching. The instruction to pound celery in a wooden bowl and press it through a sieve is a reminder of how much of that era's refinement was simply labour: the smooth, pale, strained soup was a marker of a well-run kitchen precisely because it was tedious to produce.