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Baked Bean Soup
3 cups cold baked beans 2 tablespoons butter 3 pints water 2 tablespoons flour 2 slices onion 1 tablespoon Chili sauce 2 stalks celery Salt 1 1/2 cups stewed and strained tomatoes Pepper Put beans, water, onion, and celery in saucepan; bring to boiling-point and simmer thirty minutes. Rub through a sieve, add tomato, and Chili sauce, season to taste with salt and pepper, and bind with the butter and flour cooked together. Serve with Crisp Crackers.
A thrifty puree built on leftover baked beans, and it works as well now as it did then provided you sieve or blend it thoroughly and taste carefully before salting.
- The beans decide the soupThis almost certainly assumes leftover New England-style baked beans -- navy beans baked slowly with salt pork and molasses. Those are already sweet and salty, so hold back on seasoning until the tomato is in and you have tasted the finished pot. Canned baked beans in tomato sauce will work but push the soup sweeter still.
- Measures3 pints of water is 6 cups. The 1 1/2 cups of stewed and strained tomatoes is about one 15-oz can put through a sieve, or an equal volume of passata.
- Chili sauce is not hot sauceIn American cookbooks of this period Chili sauce means a thick, sweet-sour tomato relish in the ketchup family, seasoned with onion, vinegar and mild spice. A tablespoon of a modern chili-garlic paste or hot sauce would overwhelm the pot; use a bottled tomato chili sauce or ketchup with a splash of vinegar.
- Getting it through the sieveRubbing 3 cups of baked beans through a sieve by hand is slow work. A blender or immersion blender does it in a minute, but pass the result through a sieve afterward anyway -- bean skins stay gritty no matter how long you blend.
- The bindingThe 2 tablespoons each of butter and flour are cooked together into a roux, then whisked into the hot soup and simmered a couple of minutes so the flour loses its raw taste. Thin baked-bean puree separates and settles quickly; this step is what keeps it smooth in the bowl.
- ConsistencyThe soup thickens noticeably as it stands and again on reheating. Hold back some of the water and add it at the end, or keep a cup of hot water beside the pot to loosen it.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, enough for six as a first course or four as a supper dish. Crisp crackers means plain soda or water crackers, crisped briefly in a moderate oven.