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Vegetarian Soup
3 qts. Water 1 qt shredded cabbage 1 pt. sliced potato 1/2 pt. minced carrot 1/2 pt. turnip 1/2 pt. minced onion 1 leek 2 tomatoes 2 tablespoons minced celery 2 tablespoons green pepper 2 tablespoons shortening 2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper Have the water boiling in the stewpan and add all the vegetables except the potatoes and tomatoes. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes, then draw back where it will boil gently for 1 hour. At the end of this time, add the other ingredients and cook 1 hour longer. Have the cover partially off the stewpan during the entire cooking. This soup may be varied by using different kinds of vegetables. Serves 16.
A plain water-based vegetable soup built on volume measures rather than weights, written for a coal or wood range where a pot could be "drawn back" from the hottest spot. Everything here translates directly to a modern burner.
- Volume measuresA pint is 2 cups and a quart is 4 cups, measured loosely as cut vegetables rather than packed. Roughly: 4 cups cabbage, 2 cups sliced potato, 1 cup each carrot, turnip and onion, into 12 cups water.
- "Draw back"On a range this meant sliding the pot to a cooler part of the stovetop. On a modern hob, boil hard for 10 minutes then reduce to the lowest setting that keeps a bare simmer.
- Two hours is longTotal cooking time is a little over two hours, which is far more than modern vegetable soups get. The cabbage, turnip and carrot will be very soft and the flavour flat-sweet rather than fresh. If you want distinct vegetables, hold the cabbage and carrot back for the final 30 minutes.
- Lid ajarThe recipe says to keep the cover partially off for the whole cooking, which lets steam escape and reduces the liquid. Clamping the lid on will leave a thinner, more strongly cabbagey broth.
- ShorteningTwo tablespoons of a plain solid fat; in this period "shortening" could mean lard or a vegetable shortening. Butter or olive oil does the same job; note that butter makes the soup lacto-vegetarian rather than vegan.
- SeasoningTwo teaspoons of salt in 3 quarts of plain water is light by current taste, especially with no stock behind it. Season again at the end, and a splash of vinegar or lemon lifts a long-cooked vegetable pot considerably.
- TomatoesTwo fresh tomatoes go in late, with the potatoes; canned tomatoes work if fresh ones are out of season.
- YieldSixteen servings. Halve everything for a household pot.
Meatless menus appeared in American cookbooks of the early twentieth century for several overlapping reasons: Lenten and other religious fast days, wartime and Depression-era economy, and the growing hygienic-vegetarian movement associated with sanitarium cookery. A soup like this one is squarely in the economical tradition rather than the ideological one. It is built entirely on cheap winter storage vegetables plus water, with no stock, no dairy and no legume, so its cost is close to nothing and its protein content negligible. The invitation to vary the vegetables is the honest heart of the recipe: this is a formula for whatever the cellar or the market has, and it belongs to a long line of household soups in which the proportions matter far more than the specific list.