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Lentil Soup
1/2 lb. (1 cup) lentils. 3 stalks celery. 4 springs parsley. 1 onion. 1 carrot. 1 turnip. 1 crust stale bread. 1 bay leaf. 1 blade mace. I blade mace 1 teaspoonful salt 1/4 pint (1/2 cup) cream 3 pints (6 cups) water 1 I carrot I turnip I crust stale bread I bay leaf 1 teaspoonful whole peppers 1/2 pint (I cup) milk I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) butter I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour Wash the lentils and put them to soak in cold water overnight. In the morning drain them and put them into an earthenware pan with the water, bring slowly to the boil, and skim well; then add the vegetables cut into small pieces, the mace, bay leaf, whole peppers, and bread, simmer for one and a half hours. Strain the soup, rubbing as much of the pulp through the sieve as possible. 1/2 pint (1 cup) milk. 1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) butter. 1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) flour.
Melt the butter in the pan, stir in the flour, add the milk, and boil for four minutes. Add the soup, and season it nicely. Divide the cream into earthenware cups and pour the soup over it.
A straightforward pulse soup, thickened with a white sauce and finished with cream. The ingredient list as printed has lost the quantity of lentils, so that is the one thing you must supply yourself.
- The missing lentilsThe list gives water, vegetables and aromatics but no weight of lentils — the figure has dropped out of the text. For 6 cups of water, about 1/2 lb (roughly 1 cup) of brown or green lentils gives the right body once sieved.
- Overnight soak is optional nowModern lentils are cleaned and dried to a standard the period grocer could not manage, and they cook through in 30-40 minutes without soaking. If you skip the soak, expect the 90-minute simmer to be more than enough rather than barely sufficient.
- Earthenware panHere the pan goes on the stovetop: the lentils are brought slowly to the boil in it, so this is a lidded flameproof clay pot, not a baking dish. Any heavy saucepan works; unglazed or thinly glazed vintage earthenware should not be used for cooking.
- UnitsAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so the parenthetical cup conversions in the original run slightly generous — 3 Imperial pints is closer to 7 US cups than 6. A heaping tablespoon of butter or flour is given as 1 oz, about 2 level tablespoons.
- Blade mace and whole peppersMace blades are the dried outer covering of nutmeg, sold whole in spice shops; a scant 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg is a passable stand-in. Tie the mace, bay and peppercorns in muslin so you are not fishing them out of the sieve.
- The crust of stale breadIt acts chiefly as a thickener, and most of it goes through with the pulp when you push the soup through the sieve. Use a dry heel of plain white bread; anything seeded or sour will show.
- SievingA conical sieve and a ladle, or a food mill, gives the smooth texture intended. A blender is faster but leaves the skins in, so pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the original result.
- The cream in the cupsCold cream is divided between the serving cups and the hot soup poured over it, which tempers the cream and makes splitting unlikely. Do not boil the finished soup after the cream goes in.
- YieldAbout 6 to 7 cups finished — four generous or six modest servings as a first course.
Lentil soup belongs to the plain, thrifty end of the repertoire, and its appearance here is no accident: earthenware holds a low, even heat, which suits pulses that need long slow simmering and turn gritty if boiled hard. The method here is thoroughly late-Victorian in shape ,, turnip and a bag of whole spice, then sieved to a pur d let down with a butter-and-flour white sauce. The stale bread crust doing duty as a thickener is older still, a survival of the medieval habit of bread-thickened pottages that persisted in British household cookery long after roux arrived from France. Lentils themselves were cheap and kept indefinitely in the dry-goods cupboard.