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Potato Soup
3 potatoes 1 quart milk 2 slices onion 1/4 teaspoon celery salt or celery stalk 2 tablespoons shortening 1 tablespoon flour 1 teaspoon salt few grains pepper Few grains cayenne 1 teaspoon parsley, minced Cook potatoes in boiling salted water until soft; drain, rub through puree strainer. Scald milk with onion and celery stalk; remove onion and celery and add milk slowly to potatoes, stirring constantly. Melt shortening, add dry ingredients, stir until well mixed, then add to hot soup. Add also the minced parsley and cook 1 minute before serving Serves 6.
A plain cream-of-potato soup thickened lightly with a roux stirred in at the end rather than at the start. The whole character of it depends on the potatoes being properly dry and smooth before the milk goes in.
- The hinge: sieve, don't mashRubbing the drained potatoes through a puree strainer gives a texture no masher matches, and it is why the soup stays smooth instead of gluey. A food mill or a ricer does the same job in less time; a blender or food processor will turn the starch elastic.
- Dry the potatoes firstAfter draining, return them to the hot pan for a minute over low heat to drive off steam. Wet potatoes give a thin soup that no amount of flour will rescue.
- ShorteningIn this period shortening means a solid fat, often a branded vegetable fat such as Crisco, though lard was also sold under the name. Butter is the better modern choice for flavour and works much the same way in a roux.
- Scalding the milkBring the quart of milk just to the point where it steams and shows bubbles at the edge, about 180F, then hold it off the heat while the onion and celery infuse. Whole milk is presumably intended; skim gives a watery result.
- Roux added lateTwo tablespoons fat to one tablespoon flour is a fat-heavy mix and will thicken only slightly, which is the intent. Cook the flour in the fat a minute before it meets the soup or the finished bowl tastes raw and pasty.
- "Dry ingredients"Meaning the flour, salt, pepper, cayenne and celery salt if you are using it rather than the stalk. Use one or the other, not both.
- Final cooking timeOne minute is enough once everything is hot, and it is deliberate: prolonged boiling after the milk goes in risks curdling and dulls the parsley. Add the parsley off the boil if you want it green.
- Quantities and yieldThree potatoes is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of a floury variety such as russet. Six servings here are cup-sized soup-course portions; as a main course with bread it feeds three or four.