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Kidney Bean Soup
Use recipe for bean soup, substituting kidney beans for Lima beans and adding one tablespoon vinegar. 2 cups baked beans 2 tablespoons onion 2 cups tomatoes 2 cups water
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe, and the ingredient list printed with it belongs to the baked-bean version of the soup rather than the Lima-bean one. Read it as two possible routes to the same bowl.
- The cross-reference problemThe instruction says to follow the book's bean soup (made with Lima beans) and swap in kidney beans. The list printed underneath is built on 2 cups baked beans rather than kidney beans; whether it belongs to this entry or to an adjoining one cannot be told from the page as given. Decide which route you are taking before you start rather than trying to reconcile them.
- The vinegar is the pointThe vinegar -- One tablespoon of vinegar, along with the change of bean, is what separates this from the book's plain bean soup. Add it off the heat at the end, taste, and stop there. Cooked in from the beginning it dulls, and acid added early also keeps beans firm.
- BeansIf starting from dried kidney beans, soak overnight and simmer until fully tender before combining with the tomato and water. Dried kidney beans must be brought to a full boil and cooked through, not merely warmed. Canned beans, drained and rinsed, are a reasonable substitute for the period's home-cooked pot.
- "2 tablespoons onion"Presumably chopped onion measured by volume, roughly a quarter of a small onion. The recipe gives no method for it; sweating it in a little butter first is one option.
- TomatoesTwo cups of tomatoes in a book of this date would usually mean canned tomatoes with their juice, or fresh peeled and stewed. A 14 to 15 oz can is close enough.
- TextureSoups of this type were often rubbed through a sieve before serving. A brief pass with an immersion blender gives the same body; leave some beans whole if you prefer.
- TimingTwenty to thirty minutes at a gentle simmer once everything is in the pot is ample when the beans are already cooked. Longer only thickens it, and you may need extra water.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four as a first course. This entry gives no salt measure; season at the end, since baked beans and canned tomatoes both arrive salted.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard and published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, which explains the unusually large confectionery section in a general household book. The soup chapter is conventional for its date: a base recipe followed by a chain of one-line variations, each swapping a legume or adding a single seasoning. The tablespoon of vinegar reflects a common period habit of finishing heavy bean and pea soups with acid to lift them, the same instinct behind the sherry stirred into black bean soup.