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Bisque of Turnip
4 good-sized ruta bagas, 1 pound of beef, I onion, 1 quart of water, 1 pint of milk, Salt and pepper to taste.
Put the meat into the soup kettle with the water and the onion, add the turnips, simmer gently one hour. Then press through a purée sieve, return to the kettle, add the milk, bring to boiling point. Season and serve. If the
A plain milk-thickened root soup of the kind that filled the vegetable chapters of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks. The instructions are terse and the text breaks off mid-sentence, so a few decisions are left to the cook.
- Ruta baga means rutabagaFour good-sized rutabagas is a lot of root for a quart of water, quite possibly 3 lb or more once peeled and cut. Expect a thick purée. The sentence breaks off mid-word ("If the...") and we cannot know what it said; thinning with more milk or broth is a reasonable course.
- The beef is for flavor, not for eatingThe beef is mainly for flavor -- The recipe says only "1 pound of beef"; a stewing cut or a marrow bone would give the stock body. An hour of gentle simmering will not tenderize a cut like shin or chuck, so it makes sense to lift the meat out before sieving and use it elsewhere, though the recipe does not say so.
- Purée sieveA food mill or a coarse sieve worked with a wooden spoon. A blender or immersion blender does it faster and smoother; if you want the old texture, pass the blended soup through a mesh strainer afterward.
- Do not boil after the milk goes inDo not push past the boil after the milk goes in -- The recipe does say "bring to boiling point," but no further: a pint of milk in a thick root purée will catch on the pan bottom if held at a rolling boil. Bring it just to the first shiver and serve.
- Season late and generouslySeason late -- The recipe already seasons after the milk is in and the soup is hot, which is when a milky purée tastes truest; season to taste there, and pepper generously. Nutmeg is a common seasoning in milk soups of this type if you want it.
- Why it is called a bisqueIn this era "bisque" simply meant a smooth soup enriched with milk or cream, shellfish or not. There is no thickening roux here — the pulp of the root does the work.
- YieldAbout 6 cups, serving four as a first course. The book gives no quantity.
Purée soups of this kind — a root or two, a piece of cheap beef for savor, milk to soften it, and a sieve to make it look refined — were a staple of American home cookbooks in this period. Calling it a "bisque" borrowed the prestige of French restaurant cooking for a dish built on rutabaga, which was often thought of as cattle feed or a poor-man's winter keeper rather than company food. The rutabaga is the swede, generally traced to a cross between cabbage and turnip and long associated with northern Europe, and it stored well in a cellar through the months when nothing green was available.