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Swedish Fruit Soup
/ Allow one-third part of apricots or prunes to two-thirds dried apples, in proportion of a cup of the apples to two quarts of water. Wash and soak over night in the water (cold). In the morning place on the stove with a cup of raisins or currants, or half and half, a sprinkling of cinnamon and tablespoon of tapioca or sago. Add another quart of cold water and simmer till fruits and tapioca or sago are tender. Add a little sugar or salt as liked.
A dried-fruit soup built on proportion rather than fixed weights, which makes it easy to scale but vague about yield. A few points worth settling before you start.
- The proportions, made concreteTwo-thirds dried apples to one-third prunes or apricots, at one cup of apples to two quarts of water. A workable batch: 2 cups dried apple slices, 1 cup pitted prunes or dried apricots, soaked overnight in 4 quarts cold water, with a further quart added in the morning.
- The soaking is not optionalModern dried apples are often more leathery than home-dried rings. The overnight cold soak is what lets them rehydrate without disintegrating, and the soaking water carries flavor drawn from the fruit, so do not drain it.
- Tapioca or sagoThe recipe means small pearl tapioca or true sago pearls, which need the full simmer to go translucent. Quick-cooking or instant tapioca thickens in minutes and will turn the soup gluey if added at the start; if that is what you have, stir it in during the last ten minutes.
- One tablespoon is a light handA single tablespoon of tapioca in this quantity of liquid gives a barely thickened soup, closer to fruit broth. For a syrupier body, use 3 to 4 tablespoons and expect it to thicken further as it cools.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil breaks the apple slices down into mush and can make tapioca stringy. Hold it at a bare simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, until the pearls are clear through and the prunes are plump but intact.
- CinnamonA stick or two of cinnamon simmered in the pot and fished out gives cleaner flavor than ground cinnamon, which clouds the liquid and settles. A strip of lemon peel is a common addition in fruit soups of this kind, though the recipe omits it.
- Sugar or salt "as liked"Add sweetening only at the end, after the fruit has given up its own sugar; dried apricots and prunes vary enormously. A quarter teaspoon of salt sharpens the fruit whether or not you sweeten it.
- Yield and servingScaled as in [0] this makes roughly 4 to 5 quarts, or 10 to 12 servings; at the recipe's own single-cup scale, about 3 quarts. It is served warm or thoroughly chilled, and it thickens after a day in the refrigerator; keep it no more than four or five days.
Fruktsoppa was a fixture of Swedish and Swedish-American households, and its ingredients explain why: dried apples, prunes and raisins kept through a long winter when fresh fruit did not, and tapioca or sago gave body without cream or eggs. In Sweden it was eaten warm as a light first or last course, sometimes with rusks or a spoonful of thick cream, and the same soup chilled did duty as a dessert in summer. Dried-fruit soups of this kind are found across northern and central Europe, and the specifically Swedish version reached American cookbooks through the large Scandinavian immigration of the late nineteenth century. The instruction to add "sugar or salt as liked" is a reminder that the dish sat on the boundary between soup and pudding.