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Lentil Soup (1 tablespoonful of butter)
1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 quarts of stock, A sprig of parsley, I bay-leaf, Salt and pepper to taste.
Wash the lentils, soak over night, in the morning drain off the water. Wash, put them in a soup kettle, add the stock and simmer gently about one and a half hours. Put the butter in a frying-pan, when melted, add the onion sliced, parsley, thyme, and bay-leaf. Fry until a light brown, add this to the lentils and simmer a half hour longer. Press the whole through a purée sieve, return to the kettle, boil up once, add the salt and pepper and serve with squares of toasted bread.
If the soup settles after you pour it into the tureen, your sieve is not sufficiently fine or your soup is not thick enough. By rubbing a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour together and adding it to the soup, you will prevent the settling of the thick part to the bottom.
A straightforward puréed lentil soup, though the printed ingredient list has lost several items that the method calls for. Read the instructions first and shop from those.
- The missing quantitiesNo amount of lentils is given, and the onion and thyme appear only in the method. For 2 quarts of stock, a pound (about 2 cups dry) of brown or green lentils gives a soup thick enough to hold together, with one medium onion and a few sprigs of thyme.
- Soaking is optional nowOlder recipes routinely called for an overnight soak, though modern packaged lentils cook through in 30-40 minutes unsoaked; if you skip the soak, start checking at 45 minutes rather than simmering the full hour and a half.
- Use brown or green, not redRed and yellow split lentils collapse into purée on their own and will not stand up to a further half hour of simmering. Brown, green or Puy lentils are what this method assumes.
- The purée sievePressing 2 quarts through a sieve is heavy work. A stick blender in the pot does the same job in a minute, though passing the blended soup through a fine strainer afterwards still catches the skins and gives the smoothness the recipe is after.
- The settling problemThe final note is the useful part: a beurre manié of a tablespoon each of butter and flour, whisked in at the end and boiled a minute to cook out the raw flour, keeps the purée in suspension. Thinning the soup too far with stock is the usual cause of separation.
- Season at the endSalt is added only after the purée is returned to the kettle, which suits a soup simmered for some two hours, since a salted stock concentrates as it reduces. Taste once the butter and flour are in.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts of finished soup after simmering and sieving, enough for six to eight as a first course.
Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods in the Near East and Mediterranean, but in English and American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century they carry a distinctly Continental air — lentil soup was associated with German and French cookery, and often appeared in Lenten and vegetarian sections as a cheap source of substantial nourishment. The technique here follows a familiar Continental pattern: a long simmer, aromatics browned separately in butter and added to cook on with the rest, then everything forced through a purée sieve. That final step is the closing note about settling is the sort of practical troubleshooting a cook learns by experience.