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Virginia Peanut Soup
Roast and shell sufficient peanuts to measure 3 pints. Pound them to a paste, adding salt to taste. Put this paste in a saucepan and add, very gradually, 2 quarts of boiling water. Season with black and red pepper and simmer until it thickens. Just before serving add 1 quart of oysters and I salt-spoonful of celery seed and cook until the oysters ruffle.
A thick, unsweetened peanut purée finished with oysters — closer to a Virginia tradition than to modern smooth peanut soup. The main adjustments are volume measures for nuts and the very short cooking of the oysters.
- 3 pints of peanuts is a lotThree pints of shelled roasted peanuts is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb, around 800 to 900 g. Against 2 quarts of water that gives a very heavy soup; the finished pot would serve something like 10 to 12 as a first course, and halving the whole recipe is reasonable.
- RoastingRaw peanuts roast in about 20 minutes at 350F, shaken once or twice, until the skins loosen and the kernels are pale gold. Rub off the skins in a towel before pounding, or the soup will be flecked and slightly bitter.
- Pounding to a pasteA food processor does in three minutes what a mortar does in twenty. Run it until the nuts pass from crumbs to a stiff, oily butter; if you stop at the crumb stage the soup stays gritty and never emulsifies.
- Adding the water"Very gradually" is the hinge. Pour boiling water into the paste a ladleful at a time, working it smooth each time, as you would loosen tahini. Dumping it in at once leaves lumps of nut paste that no amount of simmering will break down.
- Red pepper"Black and red pepper" means black pepper and cayenne. A quarter teaspoon of cayenne for the full batch gives warmth without heat; the soup is bland without some.
- Simmer with attentionA thick nut purée scorches readily. Use a heavy pan over low heat and stir often, 20 to 30 minutes, until it coats the spoon. Nut oil may separate out; whisk it back in before the oysters go in.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon held about a quarter teaspoon.
- The oysters"Cook until the oysters ruffle" means the frilled edges curl, which takes 1 to 2 minutes in hot soup off a hard boil. Anything longer and they shrink and turn rubbery. Add their liquor with them for flavour, and strain it if sandy.
- Unsalted nutsSalt the paste yourself as directed; commercial salted roasted peanuts will overwhelm the pot once it has reduced.
Peanut soup belongs to the Virginia and Carolina tidewater, where peanuts — long called groundnuts or goobers, a name usually traced to a Bantu word (Kikongo nguba) — were grown as a field and hog crop before they became a table food, and where oysters were cheap and plentiful. The pairing of a ground-nut base with shellfish is generally traced to West African cooking brought to the region by enslaved cooks. Peanuts and shell oysters were among the cheaper sources of protein and fat available, and this single pot turns roughly two pounds of nuts into supper for a dozen people.