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Split Pea Puree
1 pint vegetable stock 1 cup dried split peas 2 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons butter 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 quart water To prepare the vegetable stock, take one-half cup chopped turnips, one-half cup celery, one-half cup sliced potatoes, one-half cup chopped onion, and one-half cu chopped carrots. Cook these vegetables in plenty of water to cover till tender; drain off the liquid, of which there should be a pint. If necessary add water enough to make this quantity. Soak the split peas over night, and simmer in water to cover until soft. Press the peas through a colander, and add the vegetable broth and water to make one quart. Rub the flour and butter together, and pour over it slowly the hot liquids. Cook five minutes. Add seasoning and serve.
A plain vegetable-stock pea soup thickened with a butter-and-flour paste. The quantities in the header list and the method disagree slightly, so read the method first.
- The liquid mathThe ingredient list gives 1 pint stock and 1 quart water, but the method says to combine the pea puree with the stock and add water only to make one quart total. Follow the method: a quart of finished soup is right for this much pea. Adding a further quart of water gives a thin, bland result.
- Soaking and simmering the peasSplit peas do not strictly need an overnight soak; unsoaked they take about 45-60 minutes at a low simmer. Older peas cook far more slowly, so buy them from a shop with turnover. Keep the simmer gentle or they scorch on the bottom.
- Pressing through a colanderWhere we would reach for a food mill, the recipe uses a colander. A food mill, a sieve and wooden spoon, or a few seconds with an immersion blender all do the job faster, though a blender gives a smoother, slicker texture than the original intends.
- The roux is done coldRubbing flour and butter together raw and then pouring hot liquid over it is a beurre manié-style thickening, not a cooked roux. Pour slowly and whisk constantly or you will get lumps, and give it the full five minutes at a simmer to lose the raw-flour taste.
- Butter quantityFour tablespoons of butter to a quart of soup is rich by modern habit but is doing real work here — it is the only fat in a meatless dish. Halving it thins both flavour and body; if you cut it, cut the flour proportionally too.
- SeasoningA teaspoon and a half of salt assumes an unsalted vegetable water. Taste before adding all of it, especially if you used commercial stock. Black pepper, a bay leaf in the pea pot, and a squeeze of lemon at the end all suit the soup.
- Do not waste the stock vegetablesThe recipe drains the turnip, celery, potato, onion and carrot and uses only their liquid. Press the softened vegetables through the colander along with the peas if you want a fuller soup, or keep them for a hash.
- YieldAbout one quart, serving four as a first course or two as a light supper. It thickens considerably on standing and will need loosening with water or stock when reheated.
Split pea soup is one of the oldest continuously cooked dishes in Europe, dried peas having been a winter staple long before dried beans arrived from the Americas, and a pea pottage thickened with fat is recognisably the same food in medieval and Victorian kitchens alike. What marks this version as a product of its book is the deliberate vegetable stock: cookbooks of the meatless-cookery genre, which multiplied in the English-speaking world from the later nineteenth century onward, had to solve the problem of where savour comes from when there is no ham hock or bacon in the pot. The answer here is the standard aromatic quartet of turnip, celery, onion and carrot simmered down for its liquor, plus a generous quantity of butter — such books being generally meatless rather than vegan, so that dairy and eggs were often permitted. Pressing the peas through a colander rather than serving them whole also reflects the period's taste for the smooth purée-style soup, which is often said to have been thought more refined than a rustic broth.