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Purée of Vegetable Soup (Tablespoonfuls of rice I)
2 tablespoonfuls of rice, I carrot, I tomato, 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, Salt and pepper to taste. 2 tablespoonfuls of corn starch, 1 pint of milk, 1 quart of water, Peel the potatoes and onion and cut them in slices. Put the butter in a frying-pan, add the onion, fry until it is a golden brown. Turn into the soup kettle; add the potatoes, rice, and carrot scraped and cut into slices, add the water, cook slowly until the vegetables are tender, about one hour. Press all through a purée sieve and return to the kettle. Moisten the corn starch with a little cold milk, add to the purée and then add the milk. Stir continually until boiling, season and serve with croûtons. 4 good-sized carrots, 1 pint of milk, I onion, 2 bay-leaves,
The ingredient list here has been mangled in transcription: the method calls for potatoes that were never listed, the capital letter "I" stands for the numeral 1, and the final line ("4 good-sized carrots, 1 pint of milk, 1 onion, 2 bay-leaves") is the opening of the next recipe in the book, not part of this one. Work from the method rather than the list.
- Reading the quantitiesEvery "I" in the original is the numeral 1: 1 carrot, 1 tomato, 1 pint of milk, 1 quart of water. The tomato is listed but never mentioned again in the method; add it with the potatoes and carrot.
- The missing potatoesThe method opens "Peel the potatoes and onion" though neither appears in the list. For a soup built on 1 quart of water and 1 pint of milk, about 1 lb of floury potatoes and 1 medium onion give the right body. This is a genuine gap in the text, not a conversion problem.
- The hinge: sieve, then thickenThe vegetables go through the sieve before any milk or starch enters. Purée first and the starch cannot lump or scorch; add milk to the pot early and it will catch on the bottom during the hour of simmering.
- Purée sieveA conical chinois pressed with a ladle, or a food mill on the fine plate, does what the original sieve did. A blender gives a smoother, slightly gluey result with potato; the mill is truer to the intended texture.
- Cornstarch with potatoTwo tablespoons of cornstarch on top of a pound of potatoes will make a heavy soup. Slake it in cold milk as directed, then add it gradually and stop when the soup coats a spoon; you may not need all of it.
- Don't boil hard after the milk"Stir continually until boiling" means bring it just up to the boil to cook out the starch, then pull it off. Held at a rolling boil, the milk catches and the soup takes on a scalded flavour.
- CroûtonsCroûtons of this period were usually small dice of bread fried in butter, though toasted or oven-dried versions also appear. Fry them at the last minute and drain briefly; they soften within a minute or two in the bowl.
- YieldThree pints of liquid before reduction gives four generous first-course servings.
Purées of this kind were a staple of household soup repertoires in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: a base of onion sweated in butter, one or two starchy vegetables, water rather than stock, and milk thickened with cornstarch or flour to give smoothness. The point was economy. Cornstarch had been manufactured in quantity in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century and was cheap and shelf-stable, which let a cook produce something with real body from a carrot, a tomato and a few potatoes. The instruction to press everything through a purée sieve is the labour that modern equipment has erased.