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Vegetable Purees
Cook the vegetable to a mush, rub through a soup strainer and add the stock, as in dry bean and pea purees.
This is a method rather than a recipe — a one-line cross-reference to the dried bean and pea purees printed alongside it. It works, but the cook has to supply the proportions.
- "Cook to a mush"Simmer covered in a little salted water or stock until the vegetable collapses under a spoon, then use the cooking liquid as part of the stock so nothing is thrown away. Undercooking is the usual failure — anything still firm will not go through a sieve without leaving half of itself behind.
- The soup strainerProbably a conical strainer or a fine-mesh sieve worked with a wooden pestle; the book does not describe the tool. A blender or food processor does the pulping faster, but for fibrous vegetables such as celery, asparagus or older peas you still want to pass the puree through a sieve afterwards to catch the strings and skins.
- Stock choiceThe recipe does not say which stock; a light meat stock, a vegetable stock, or the vegetable's own cooking water will all serve, the last of these for a meatless version. Add the stock hot and gradually and stir as you go.
- Seasoning at the endPurees swallow salt. Season only after the stock is in and the soup has come back to a simmer, and finish with cream, butter or a spoonful of sherry if the vegetable is bland.
- ReheatingBring it just to a simmer. Starchy purees scorch on the bottom of a thin pan, so use a heavy saucepan and stir up from the base.
Vegetable purees belong to the period when a soup course opened almost every ordered meal, and cookbooks divided their soups into clear soups, cream soups and purees — the puree being the one thickened by the vegetable itself rather than by flour, cream or eggs. The technique comes out of the French repertoire (potage puree). Terse entries like this depend on cross-reference: the full instructions are given once, under dried beans and peas, and other vegetables are handled by pointing back at them. It assumes a reader who has already made the earlier soup and is not being taught the method so much as reminded that it generalizes.