Protose Broth
1/2 pound protose or similar vegetable meat 1 pint cold water 1 cup broth from canned asparagus or water in which asparagus has been cooked 1/2 bay leaf 1/4 teaspoon celery salt 1/2 small onion, chopped Mash the protose. Put it into the water with the asparagus broth, bay leaf, and onion. Bring slowly to boiling, and simmer slowly for about two hours. Strain. There should be about one cup of broth. Season with salt and a bit of thyme, if desired. Reheat and serve.
A meatless clear broth from the Battle Creek school of cookery, built on a commercial gluten-and-peanut product that no longer exists under that name. The substitution is the whole problem to solve.
- ProtoseA canned vegetarian "meat" of wheat gluten and peanuts sold by the Sanitas/Battle Creek Food Company from the late 1890s. Nothing on a modern shelf matches it exactly; seitan simmered with a spoonful of peanut butter comes closest in body and savour, and plain wheat gluten alone will give a thinner, less nutty broth.
- Asparagus liquidThe cup of canned-asparagus brine or asparagus cooking water is the main source of flavour here, not a garnish. Canned asparagus liquid is heavily salted, so hold back on the finishing salt until after straining; fresh asparagus cooking water is not salty and will need more.
- The celery saltIt is listed among the ingredients but never mentioned in the method. Add it with the bay leaf and onion at the start, and count it toward your total salt.
- Mash thoroughlyGluten "meat" only gives up flavour where water can reach it. Break the half pound down to a coarse paste with a fork before it goes into the pot, or the two hours of simmering will yield little.
- Keep it below a boil"Bring slowly to boiling, and simmer slowly" means a bare tremble. A rolling boil clouds the broth with suspended gluten and defeats the straining.
- StrainingPass through a fine sieve lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter for a clear result. Press the solids gently; hard pressing pushes fines through and muddies the cup.
- YieldAbout one cup of finished broth from three cups of liquid, so this is one serving as a first course or an invalid's cup, not a soup for the table. Scale up fourfold for four people.
- Bay and thymeHalf a bay leaf for three cups is a light hand, and two hours of extraction will draw plenty from it. Add the optional thyme at the reheat rather than at the start so it stays fresh rather than stewed.
Protose was one of the flagship products of the Battle Creek Sanitarium's food works, developed in the 1890s under J. H. Kellogg as a nut-and-gluten substitute for meat, and it turns up constantly in the vegetarian cookery books that grew out of that circle. Recipes like this one exist because the Sanitarium diet forbade meat broths but still wanted the savoury, restorative cup that nineteenth-century cooks fed to convalescents and served before dinner; asparagus liquor, celery salt and long slow extraction were all pressed into service to imitate the depth of beef tea. Protose passed to Worthington Foods when the Battle Creek food business changed hands, and remained available through that line of Adventist food companies well into the twentieth century before being discontinued, which is why a recipe that once called for a single tin now requires improvisation.