Asparagus Soup
This can be made next day from the same water in which the asparagus was boiled by adding whatever cold meat you have on hand, with salt, pepper and parsley. If you wish to thicken it, small pieces of potatoes, cut up and passed through a sieve, may be added, also a handful of sorrel, a small lettuce, two small green onions, and chervil.
Less a formal recipe than a thrifty idea: turn yesterday’s asparagus water and odds and ends into a fresh soup. A lesson in not wasting flavor.
- Save the cooking waterThe water asparagus was boiled in is a light, free vegetable stock — the whole premise of the soup. Don’t pour it out.
- Build it upAdd whatever cold meat you have, plus salt, pepper, and parsley; a handful of sorrel, lettuce, green onion, and chervil rounds it out.
- Thicken with potatoFor more body, add diced potato and pass it through a sieve (or blend) — a natural, flour-free thickener.
- Use fresh asparagus endsModern twist: simmer the woody asparagus ends you’d normally discard to make the stock, then blend in the tender tips.
This little recipe embodies the quiet thrift that ran through even the grandest old kitchens: nothing with flavor was thrown away. The water a vegetable cooked in, the cold remains of a roast, a few garden herbs — all became tomorrow’s soup. Asparagus, long prized as a delicacy going back to the Romans, was far too precious to waste down to its cooking liquid, and a resourceful cook made it stretch to a second dish.
From page 47 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
