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Philadelphia Pepper Pot
Sliced onion (1/4 cup each) Chopped celery (1/4 cup each) Chopped green peppers (1/4 cup each) 4 tablespoons butter 3 1/2 tablespoons flour 5 cups hot White Stock III 1/2 lb. honeycomb tripe, cut in cubes 1 1/2 cups potato cubes 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns, finely pounded 3/4 tablespoon salt 1/2 cup heavy cream Cook vegetables in three tablespoons butter fifteen minutes; add flour, and stir until well mixed; then add remaining ingredients except cream. Cover, and let cook one hour. Just before serving, add cream and remaining butter.
A pale, peppery tripe soup thickened with a roux and finished with cream. The tripe is the whole point, and it decides your timing.
- Tripe, and how long it really needsTripe sold today is scrubbed and usually blanched, but almost never tender. An hour in the pot will leave it chewy; simmer it separately in salted water for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until it yields to a knife, then cube it and let it finish the hour with the vegetables and potatoes.
- White Stock IIIA cross-reference to the stock chapter: a light unbrowned stock of the veal-and-poultry type; check the book's own recipe for its exact aromatics. A good low-sodium chicken stock, or the tripe's own cooking liquid strained, stands in well.
- The vegetable measuresA quarter cup each of sliced onion, chopped celery and chopped green pepper, so three quarters of a cup of vegetables in total. Measure by volume rather than by count; a quarter cup is only part of a small onion or a pepper, and about one rib of celery.
- SaltThree quarters of a tablespoon is about 2 1/4 teaspoons, written for unsalted homemade stock. With commercial stock, add a third of it at the start and correct at the end.
- PepperHalf a teaspoon of finely pounded peppercorns carries the seasoning identity of the dish and is modest by the standards of older pepper pots. Pound or grind it fresh, as the recipe directs, rather than using pre-ground pepper, and taste before serving; more pepper gives a sharper bite.
- Cooking the vegetablesFifteen minutes in butter over low heat is meant to soften them without colour. Keep the pan below a sizzle so the roux and the finished soup stay white.
- Finishing with creamAdd the cream and the last tablespoon of butter off the boil and serve promptly. Reheating a cream-finished soup at a hard simmer risks separating it.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four as a first course or three as a supper dish with bread.
Pepper pot came to Philadelphia by way of the West Indies, where pepperpot was a long-simmered meat stew sharpened with chilli and, in the Guianese version, cassareep. In Philadelphia it settled into a peppery tripe-and-potato soup sold by Black street vendors well into the nineteenth century, hawked with the cry "pepper pot, smoking hot" and pictured in the city's early street-trade prints. The story that a Continental Army cook improvised it at Valley Forge is often repeated but rests on no contemporary evidence. By the time it reached cookery-school books like this one it had been smoothed out for a domestic kitchen: a butter roux, veal stock and a finish of heavy cream, with the heat reduced to half a teaspoon of pounded peppercorns.