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Cream Celery Soup
The following method seems to me to be a great improvement over the usual method of making cream celery, cream lettuce, cream cucumber, and cream corn soups. Stewing lettuce, celery, or cucumber, as is usually done in making these soups, changes the flavor. This method retains more of the flavor of the fresh vegetable: 2 stalks celery. (Tough outside stalks will do.) 3/4 quart milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 tablespoon oil or butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Grind the celery through a food chopper, being sure to save any juice that runs out of the chopper. Steep the celery in the milk in a double boiler one-half hour. Strain out the celery. Press well to extract all the juice. Put the liquid back into the double boiler, and heat again to boiling. Thicken with the flour stirred smooth with a little cold milk. Stir in oil and salt.
An infusion rather than a purée: the celery flavour is steeped out into hot milk and the vegetable itself discarded. A few of the quantities and vessels need translating.
- "2 stalks celery""stalk" was used loosely in this period and could mean either a single rib or the whole head; the recipe's own reference to "tough outside stalks" reads more like outer ribs. If two ribs seem thin for three cups of milk, more coarse outer ribs can be used, but the original gives no further guidance.
- Milk quantityThree-quarters of a quart is 3 cups. With 1 tablespoon each of flour and fat, the result is a thin, drinkable soup rather than a thick bisque; double the flour and butter if you want it to coat a spoon.
- Food chopperA hand-cranked meat grinder. A food processor does the same job, and the point of grinding is to rupture the cells so the flavour leaves quickly. Save every drop of juice, as instructed, since that is where most of the celery character sits.
- Steeping temperatureA double boiler keeps the milk below a direct, scorching boil, which suits a step meant to draw out fresh flavour rather than cook it away. Thirty minutes at a bare steam is enough; note that the recipe does later call for bringing the strained milk back to boiling.
- ThickeningSlaking the flour in cold milk before adding it avoids lumps, but raw flour tastes pasty. Once it is stirred in, hold the soup at a simmer for three or four minutes so the starch cooks out.
- Oil or butterThe fat goes in last, after the thickening, so it is a finishing enrichment rather than a roux. The original allows either oil or butter without saying why.
- StrainingPress the pulp hard against the sieve, as instructed, then discard it. A fine mesh or doubled cheesecloth will catch stray fibre.
- YieldAbout 3 cups, which is two modest servings as a first course. The half teaspoon of salt can be adjusted to taste.