Cucumber Soup
4 cucumbers 4 stalks of celery 4 cups milk 4 tablespoons butter 4 tablespoons flour salt and pepper 2 slices onion 1 tablespoon chopped pepper cayenne and celery salt 1 cup cream or rich milk Chop cucumbers and celery; add onion and pepper; cook in milk in double boiler twenty minutes. Add flour and butter cooked together, and seasonings. Cook five minutes, strain, add cream, reheat, and serve. 1 can corn or 6 ears of corn 2 cups cold water
A cream soup of the standard Fannie Farmer school: vegetables steeped in milk, thickened with a cooked roux, strained, enriched, and served. Straightforward once two details in the printed text are cleared up.
- The stray last line"1 can corn or 6 ears of corn / 2 cups cold water" belongs to the corn soup that follows in the book, not here. Ignore it entirely.
- "1 tablespoon chopped pepper"Most likely a sweet green pepper, chopped, rather than ground black pepper, since salt and pepper are listed separately. Cayenne and celery salt are finishing seasonings; the recipe gives no quantity for either.
- Peel and seed the cucumbersThe recipe says only "chop," but skin and seeds add bitterness and colour to a soup that is then strained. Peel, halve, scrape out the seeds, then chop.
- Why the double boilerMilk scorches easily over direct heat, and twenty minutes of simmering invites it. Keep the water below a hard boil and stir occasionally.
- The rouxCook the 4 tablespoons each of butter and flour together for two or three minutes before whisking into the hot milk — raw flour stirred in at the end tastes pasty. Whisk in small lumps so it disperses.
- StrainingPush firmly through a fine sieve; the pulp carries most of the flavour. A conical strainer and a ladle work better than a colander. A blitz with an immersion blender before straining gives a smoother result.
- Reheat gentlyOnce the cream is in, bring it back to just steaming. Boiling after the cream goes in risks separation and dulls the cucumber.
- YieldAbout five cups finished, or four to six first-course servings. Good chilled as well, in which case season more assertively — cold mutes salt.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and carries a full general household repertoire alongside its candy and cocoa chapters — soups included. The method here is of the Boston Cooking School type: a white sauce built on milk rather than stock, vegetables steeped and then strained out, cream stirred in at the end and the soup reheated. Cucumber appears as a soup vegetable in American cookbooks of this period, generally cooked rather than raw. The double boiler was standard equipment at a time when ranges gave little fine control over heat and scorched milk was a common complaint.