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German Prune Soup
Wash and soak 1 pound of prunes in 3 pints of cold water. Next day place at the side of the fire, heat very slowly and when steaming add I lemon washed and cut without paring in the thinnest of slices and I inch of stick cinnamon, and cook below the simmering point until the prunes are very tender but unbroken. If needed, add a little water, as there should be fully 3 pints when done. Add 3 tablespoonfuls of sago, a pinch of salt and sufficient sugar to sweeten to taste, and cook half an hour longer, or until the sago is transparent. Remove the cinnamon, add 2/3 of a cupful of claret and bring almost to the boiling point, then serve at once.
A cold-weather fruit soup that depends almost entirely on temperature control: everything is held just below a simmer so the prunes swell whole instead of collapsing into puree.
- Never let it boil"Below the simmering point" means bare movement in the pot with no bubbles breaking, somewhere in the region of 180-190F. A true simmer bursts the prune skins and clouds the soup; the recipe asks for prunes very tender but unbroken.
- "Side of the fire"On a range this is the coolest zone of the stovetop. On a modern burner, use the lowest setting with a heat diffuser, or hold the pot in a 200F oven.
- PrunesOne pound of dried prunes, pitted or not as you prefer; pitted are easier at the table. Modern prunes are generally sold partly rehydrated and softer than early-1900s stock, so begin checking for tenderness early -- the recipe itself gives no time for this stage.
- SagoPearl sago, from sago palm starch, is still sold in Asian and Indian groceries. Small pearl tapioca is the standard substitute in equal measure. Three tablespoons in three pints gives a lightly thickened, slippery soup, not a pudding; it is done when the pearls are clear all the way through with no white center.
- The lemonSliced unpeeled, so the pith and rind give a faint bitterness that keeps the sugar in check. Slice it paper-thin and remove the seeds. If the fruit is waxed, scrub it well first.
- ClaretIn this period the word usually meant dry red Bordeaux, though American writers applied it to Bordeaux-style domestic reds as well; any dry, unoaked red works. Two-thirds of a cup added at the end and brought only almost to the boil keeps the wine's fruit intact - it is a flavoring, not a cooked-out ingredient. Leaving it out gives a plainer but perfectly good compote soup.
- Yield and servingThree pints serves six as a first course. It is served hot here, but this style of fruit soup is equally traditional chilled, thickened slightly more as it stands, with a spoonful of sour cream or a rusk.
Sweet fruit soups thickened with a starch - Fruchtsuppe in German, fruktsoppa in Sweden, and their Polish and Danish cousins - were everyday food across northern Europe, where dried fruit was the winter store and a soup was a cheap way to stretch it across a table. They belong to a tradition in which soup is not necessarily savory and not necessarily a first course; in many households the fruit soup was supper itself, or a sweet ending. The claret and cinnamon here mark it as a company version rather than a plain one. It is an economical dish: a pound of prunes, a lemon and a few spoonfuls of sago feed six people, and the technique demands nothing but patience and a cool corner of the stove. American cookbooks of the period picked up such recipes from German immigrant kitchens.