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Baked Bean Soup
3 cups cold baked beans 3 pts. water 2 slices onion 2 stalks celery 1 1/2 cups stewed and strained tomatoes 1 tablespoon Chili sauce salt Pepper 2 tablespoons shortening 2 tablespoons flour Put beans, water, onion and celery in saucepan; bring to boiling point and simmer 30 minutes. Put through a sieve, add tomato and Chili sauce, season to taste with salt and pepper and mix with the shortening and flour cooked together. Serve with crisp crackers. Serves 12.
A thrifty way to use up leftover baked beans, and it still works. The whole thing hinges on the sieve step and on cooking the flour and fat properly before they go in.
- Roux first"Shortening and flour cooked together" means a roux: melt the fat, stir in the flour, and cook two to three minutes over moderate heat before whisking it into the hot soup. If it goes in raw the soup tastes pasty.
- 3 pts. waterSix cups. With the beans and tomato that gives roughly ten to eleven cups of finished soup, which matches the stated twelve servings as a first course.
- ShorteningHere that meant lard or a vegetable shortening. Butter or oil will do the same job; butter gives a better flavour with the tomato.
- SievingA food mill or a blender saves considerable work, though pressing through a sieve gives the smoothest result because the bean skins stay behind. If you blend, strain afterwards for texture.
- The beansBaked beans of this sort are usually already sweetened and salted (molasses, mustard, salt pork or its seasoning), so hold back on salt until the soup is finished and pureed. Canned baked beans work; drain off some of the sauce or the soup turns cloying.
- Chili sauceThe bottled chili sauce of this period is a sweet-sour tomato relish, closer to cocktail sauce than to hot sauce. Substitute a tablespoon of ketchup with a dash of vinegar rather than a modern chile paste.
- ConsistencyThe soup thickens as it stands and again on reheating. Thin with water or stock to the consistency of cream before serving.
Bean soup made from yesterday's baked beans is a New England household economy of long standing, helped by the fact that baked beans were a Saturday-night fixture that reliably produced leftovers. The dish belongs to the tradition of the "second-day" recipe: cookbooks of the 1920s and 1930s often printed instructions for converting the remains of one meal into another. The bottled chili sauce and the roux finish are period touches, signs of a kitchen at ease with commercial condiments and with French-derived thickening.