Peanut Soup
2 cups shelled and blanched peanuts 1 cup onion + cup celery 2 cups white stock 4 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 2 cups milk salt, cayenne, paprika Chop peanuts in meat chopper. Cook chopped nuts, onion, and celery in white stock twenty minutes. Melt butter; add flour, milk, and seasonings; cook five minutes. Combine mixtures, strain, and serve. 4 cups mushrooms 4 cups water 4 cups chicken stock 4 tablespoons butter
A smooth, strained peanut soup built on a white stock base and finished with a thin white sauce. It comes together in about half an hour, and the only fussy step is the straining.
- The measurements for the aromaticsThe onion is given as 1 cup, but the celery amount has not survived intact in this printing — the fraction is missing. Half a cup of celery gives a balanced result for the volume of liquid called for; treat that figure as a reasonable reading rather than the original.
- Blanched peanutsThis means raw peanuts with the skins slipped off, not roasted cocktail nuts. Cover shelled raw peanuts with boiling water for a minute and the red skins rub away. Roasted salted peanuts will give a much darker, saltier soup and you would need to cut the added salt.
- Meat chopperThe hand-cranked grinder of the period. A food processor pulsed to a coarse meal does the same job; do not run it to butter, since the point is a texture that will give up its flavor to the stock and then be strained out.
- White stockAn unbrowned stock — veal or chicken bones simmered without roasting, so the liquid stays pale. Any light chicken stock works. Avoid a dark beef stock, which will muddy both color and flavor.
- Strain, and expect a thin soupEverything is pushed through a sieve at the end, so most of the peanut solids are discarded and the body comes from the flour-and-milk base. If you want it fuller, press hard on the solids or leave a portion unstrained.
- Scorching the milk baseButter, flour, milk and seasonings cooked five minutes needs low heat and steady stirring; a milk-based roux catches quickly. Combine the two mixtures off direct heat, then bring back just to a simmer.
- SeasoningCayenne and paprika are both listed and both matter — the cayenne for heat, the paprika mostly for color against the pale peanut base. Start with a pinch of cayenne and taste after straining, when the soup is at its final concentration.
- YieldAbout four cups of finished soup, or four small first-course servings.
Peanut soup has a long history in the American South, where it is generally traced to West African cooking traditions carried into Virginia and the Carolinas; peanuts themselves came to Africa from South America by way of Portuguese traders before returning across the Atlantic. By the time this book was printed, the peanut had moved from livestock feed and street snack to respectable kitchen ingredient, helped along by mechanical shelling and the rise of commercially ground peanut products. Lowney's was a chocolate company, and its cookbook, like several issued by food manufacturers of the era, ranged well beyond its own product line into a full household repertoire — which is why a peanut soup sits comfortably in the soup chapter alongside more familiar creams and purees.