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Vegetable Soup Without Meat
1 carrot, 1 turnip, 1 parsnip, 1 onion, 1 bay-leaf, I sweet potato, I turnip, I parsnip, I white potato, I onion, I root of celery, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 tablespoonfuls of rice,. 2 quarts of cold water, I bay-leaf, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 1 sprig of parsley.
Cut the vegetables into dice. Put the butter into a frying-pan; and when hot put in all the vegetables but the white potato and fry until a light brown. Then turn the whole, butter and all, into a soup kettle, add the water, rice, bay-leaf, salt, parsley and celery. Let them boil slowly one and a quarter hours. Then add the white potato; boil fifteen minutes longer, season to taste and serve.
A frugal vegetable soup that gets its depth entirely from browning the dice in butter before the water goes in. That browning is the whole recipe; skip it and you have boiled vegetable water.
- Brown properlyUse a wide pan and give the diced vegetables room, in two batches if needed. Crowded dice steam and stay pale, and the soup has no other source of savour.
- Celery rootThe celery appears twice, once among the fried vegetables and again with the water. Dice and fry it with the rest; there is no second portion to add later.
- Why the potato waitsWhite potato added at the start would disintegrate over the long simmer and cloud the broth. Fifteen minutes at the end keeps the cubes intact.
- RiceTwo tablespoons of plain raw white rice thickens the broth slightly over the simmer; the recipe does not say which kind. Modern parboiled or instant rice will not survive seventy-five minutes of simmering, so use plain raw rice.
- Simmer, do not boil"Boil slowly" means a bare simmer with occasional bubbles. A hard rolling boil for over an hour will break the vegetables down and reduce the liquid too far.
- SaltOne teaspoon in two quarts is light by current habit, which is why the recipe says to season again at the end. Taste after the potatoes are done and adjust.
- YieldTwo quarts of water and roughly six vegetables gives four to six servings as a first course. It reheats well and thickens further overnight.
Meatless soups had a settled place in nineteenth-century American cookery long before vegetarianism was a movement: they were what you made on the many days when there was no stock pot going. The technique here, frying the vegetables in butter until light brown before adding water, is doing the work that a meat stock would otherwise do. The mix of sweet potato, turnip, parsnip and celery root may well reflect what a household root cellar held through winter, and the single bay leaf and sprig of parsley are the whole of the seasoning cupboard as such books generally assumed it.