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Beet Cream Soup
Chop one large beet very fine or grind it through a food chopper, taking care not to lose any of the juice. Add to it two and one-half cups milk. Steep in a double boiler fifteen or twenty minutes or longer after it reaches scalding temperature. Strain out the beet, pressing it well to extract all the flavor. Return the soup to the double boiler. Reheat, and thicken with one tablespoon of flour stirred smooth with a little cold milk. Add salt and one tablespoon of oil.
A simple infusion soup: raw beet flavors and colors scalded milk, the solids are pressed out, and the liquid is lightly thickened. The whole thing depends on keeping the milk below a boil.
- Keep it under the boilThe double boiler is not optional here: milk held at a full boil scorches and skins, and the delicate earthy flavor suffers. Scalding temperature is about 180F, when steam rises and small bubbles ring the edge.
- Grate rather than chopA food chopper of the period was a hand-cranked grinder. The box grater's coarse side or a food processor gives the same broken cell walls and free juice; finer shreds extract more flavor and color in the same fifteen to twenty minutes.
- ColorExpect pale pink rather than the deep magenta of a beet puree, and expect it to fade slightly as the soup reheats. Betanin, the pigment, is heat-sensitive. A little lemon juice stirred in off the heat can brighten the color, but add it at the very end and sparingly, since acid added to hot milk risks curdling.
- Straining and pressingPress the pulp firmly in a fine sieve or twist it in cheesecloth, as the recipe directs. The pulp holds a good deal of the flavor and liquid; a lazy strain gives a weak soup.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of flour in roughly two and a half cups of milk gives a very light body, barely more than a cream soup base. Slurry it with a few tablespoons of cold milk, stir it in, and hold at a simmer-free scald for four or five minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- The tablespoon of oilOil stands where many cookbooks of the period would name butter. A neutral oil or a mild olive oil works; a tablespoon of butter swirled in at the end is the same gesture with more flavor.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Two and a half cups of milk should leave roughly two cups of finished soup after straining, or two small first-course servings; double it for four.
Cream soups built by steeping a vegetable in scalded milk, then straining and thickening, were a staple of American domestic-science cooking in the decades around 1900, taught in cooking schools as a family of recipes rather than one dish: the same method served celery, onion, spinach and asparagus. The point was extraction of flavor without a puree, producing a smooth, pale soup that suited the era's preference for refinement over rusticity. Beets were cheap and stored well through winter, and in English-language kitchens they appear more often boiled and pickled than made into soup, so this recipe reads more like a home-economics adaptation than a descendant of the sour beet soups of Eastern Europe.