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Carrot Soup No. 1
1 pound carrots 1/2 ounce onions 1 ounce butter 1/2 once flour 1 pint milk Salt and pepper 1 pint boiling water Cut the carrots and onions into small pieces, and cook them in the butter for five minutes. Add the water; cook until the vegetables are tender. Rub through a hair sieve. Return to a saucepan. Mix the flour smoothly with a little of the milk, add the rest of the milk to the carrot, etc., and boil. When boiling, add the flour. Cook for ten minutes. Seasons and serve. This soup is very delicate if made of the proper consistency. If too thick add more milk until it is as thick as rich cream. Put a few croutons in each plate.
A plain English purée soup, thickened with a milk-and-flour slurry rather than a roux. Nothing here is difficult; the only thing that decides whether it is good is the final consistency.
- The hinge: thicknessThe recipe says it should be as thick as rich cream, and it means it. Half an ounce of flour to a pint of milk is a light bind, and any purée thicker than pouring cream will taste pasty. Hold back some of the milk and add it at the end until it just coats a spoon.
- Weights and volumes1 lb carrots, 1/2 oz onion (about a tablespoon chopped, a very small amount), 1 oz butter (2 tablespoons), 1/2 oz flour (a rounded tablespoon). The "1/2 once flour" is evidently a slip for ounce. Whether the pint is imperial (20 fl oz, roughly 2 1/2 US cups) or American (16 fl oz, 2 cups) is not stated; use equal volumes of milk and water either way, and judge the finish by consistency.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve, the standard fine sieve before cheap fine wire mesh. A blender or stick blender does the work in seconds; pass it through a fine mesh strainer afterwards if you want the silky texture the original assumes.
- Cook them in the butter for five minutesThis is sweating, not browning. Keep the heat low and the pan covered so the carrots and onion soften and sweeten without colouring, or the finished soup turns muddy rather than orange.
- Adding the flourThe slurry goes into liquid that is already boiling, and must be stirred in as it goes or it will set in lumps. The ten minutes that follow are not optional padding; they cook out the raw flour taste.
- SeasoningSalt and white pepper, added at the end as directed. Carrots vary enormously in sweetness, so taste before serving; a small squeeze of lemon or a scrape of nutmeg lifts it without altering the character.
- YieldAbout 5 cups, serving four as a first course. It thickens noticeably as it stands and on reheating, so keep a little extra milk to loosen it.
- CroutonsSmall dice of bread fried in butter or oven-toasted. Put them in the plate at the last moment, as the recipe says, rather than in the pot.
The soup itself is older than Meatless Cookery: puréed carrot soups thickened with flour and enriched with milk or stock run through nineteenth-century English cookery, where they were often called Cr raced to the carrot-growing district around Crécy in northern France rather than to the battle. What marks this version as an economy recipe is the water in place of stock and the milk in place of cream — the flavour rests entirely on the pound of carrots and the butter they are sweated in, which is why the instruction to get the consistency right, rather than to add anything more, is the only note of emphasis the author allows.