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Lentil Soup (Can be removed in one solid)
and can be removed in one solid cake. The soup or stock will be a perfectly clear jelly. In taking it from the bowl be careful to leave all the sediment behind so that you have a perfectly clear soup. Cut the vegetables into pieces of uniform size and add those requiring the longest cooking first. If you do not, the softer ones will impair the transparency of the soup. The carrot, turnip, sweet potato, beans, and rice may be added one hour before serving. The potato, peas, corn and tomato add twenty minutes before. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
What survives here is the tail end of a longer method — the page begins mid-sentence, with the stock already made and chilled. Read it as finishing instructions for a clear soup rather than a complete recipe.
- The missing first halfThe recipe as printed starts after the stock has been made and left to cool. The "solid cake" being removed is the risen fat, lifted off the chilled surface in one piece.
- Why it sets to a jellyA stock that chills to a clear jelly has gelatin in it, which means bones or a meat-based broth somewhere in the omitted portion. A stock built only from lentils and vegetables will thicken slightly but will not set; if yours stays liquid, nothing has gone wrong.
- Decanting off the sedimentLentils throw a fine starchy sediment. Pour or ladle the jelly out rather than tipping the bowl, and stop while there is still half an inch of cloudy stock at the bottom — that last bit is worth keeping for a separate purée.
- The hour is too longDiced carrot, turnip and sweet potato are done in 15-20 minutes, not an hour. Cut to a half-inch dice and start them 25 minutes out.
- Rice and beansWhite rice needs about 18 minutes and will cloud the soup as it releases starch — cook it separately and add it to the bowls. The text does not say what kind of beans; if dried, they must be soaked and fully cooked before they go anywhere near a clear soup, as an hour in simmering stock will not soften them.
- Corn, peas and tomatoTwenty minutes suits none of these now. Frozen peas and corn want three to four minutes, and fresh tomato two, added off the heat if you want the soup to stay bright. Long-cooked tomato also breaks down and clouds what you have worked to keep clear.
- SeasoningSalt at the end only. The stock concentrates as the vegetables cook and an early hand with the salt is hard to undo.
- YieldNo quantities are given anywhere in the surviving text. As a garnished clear soup, allow about a cup per person as a first course.
The technique described here — chilling a stock, lifting the fat off as one cake, then decanting the clear jelly away from its sediment — is the domestic version of the professional consommé, achieved without egg-white clarification by simply letting cold and gravity do the work. Clarity mattered to the period's table: a transparent soup signalled a careful kitchen. Lentils sit slightly awkwardly in that scheme, since they cloud everything they touch, which is probably why the surviving text spends its energy on keeping the starch out of the bowl.