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Artichoke (Jerusalem) Soup
lumps of sugar, 2 1/2 quarts of white stock, INGREDIENTS. -3 slices of lean bacon or ham, 1/2 a head of celery, 1 turnip, 1 onion, 3 oz. of butter, 4 lbs. of artichokes, 1 pint of boiling milk, salt and cayenne to taste, 2 lumps of sugar, 2 quarts of white stock.
AVERAGE COST, per quart, 1s. 2d. quarters, and boil them until tender in 1/4 of an hour, keeping them well stirred. water mixed with a little salt and butter.
When done, drain them well, and lay them all round the dish, with the leaves outside.
Have ready some good gravy, highly flavoured with mushrooms; reduce it until quite thick, and pour it round the artichokes, and serve. TIME.-20 to 25 minutes to boil the artichokes.
SEASONABLE from July to the beginning of September.
Artichokes, Boiled Jerusalem. -INGREDIENTS.-To each gallon of water allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt: artichokes. AVERAGE COST, 2d. per lb. Wash, peel, and shape the artichokes in a round or oval form, and put them into a saucepan with sufficient cold water to cover them, salted in the above proportion. Let them boil gently until tender; take them up, drain them, and serve; send to table with them a tureen of melted butter or cream sauce, a little of which may be poured over the artichokes. boils.
TIME.-About 20 minutes after the water SEASONABLE from September to June.
Artichokes, Mashed Jerusagallon of water allow 1 oz. of salt, 15 or 16 artichokes, 1 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste.
AVERAGE COST, 2d. per lb. lem.-INGREDIENTS. - To each Boil the artichokes as in the preceding recipe until tender; drain and press the water from them, and beat them up with a fork. When thoroughly mashed and free from lumps, put them into a saucepan with the butter and a seasoning of white pepper and salt; keep stirring over the fire until the artichokes are quite hot, and serve. A. pretty way of serving Jerusalem artichokes is to shape the artichokes in the form of a Put the bacon and vegetables, which should be cut into thin slices, into the stewpan with the butter. Braise these for Wash and pare the artichokes, and after cutting them into thin slices, add them, with a pint of stock, to the other ingredients. When these have gently stewed down to a smooth pulp, put in the remainder of the stock. Stir it well, adding the seasoning, and when it has simmered for five minutes, pass it through a strainer.
Pour it back into the stewpan, let it again simmer five minutes, taking care to skim it well, and stir it to the boiling milk or cream. Serve with small sippets of bread fried in butter.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from June to October.
The page as printed is a jumble: the soup's opening and closing paragraphs have been split by two short recipes for boiled and mashed Jerusalem artichokes, and a fragment of a globe artichoke dish has drifted in as well. Read the soup as: braise the bacon and vegetables in butter, add sliced artichokes and a pint of stock, stew to a pulp, add the rest of the stock, season, strain, simmer and skim, then finish with the hot milk.
- Which artichokeJerusalem artichokes are sunchokes, the knobbly tubers of Helianthus tuberosus no whose leaves appear in the stray paragraph. The four pounds is presumably the weight before peeling; trimming these knobbly tubers wastes a fair proportion.
- Keep them palePeeled sunchokes brown within minutes. Drop the slices into acidulated water as you work and drain them before they go into the pan, or the finished soup turns a dull grey-beige instead of ivory.
- Imperial measuresBeeton's pint is 20 fl oz and her quart 40, so 2 quarts of stock is half an imperial gallon, about 2.3 litres. The pint of milk is likewise 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups.
- White stockA mild veal or chicken stock, unbrowned. Any unsalted light chicken stock works; a dark beef stock will overwhelm the artichokes, which are delicate and slightly sweet.
- The missing braising timeThe line "Braise these for" runs off into the next recipe. Sweat the sliced bacon, celery, turnip and onion in the butter over low heat, covered, for about 10 minutes — they should soften without colouring.
- Two lumps of sugarVictorian sugar lumps varied in size, but a lump of about a teaspoon is a fair working assumption, so perhaps 2 teaspoons in 2 quarts. Taste before adding it; modern sunchokes are sweet enough that you may want none.
- Adding the milk"Stir it to the boiling milk" means pouring the strained soup into the hot milk, not the reverse — it reduces the chance of the milk catching or splitting. Do not let it boil hard afterwards.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of bread fried in butter, the same thing as croutons. Fry them while the soup simmers and drain on paper.
- Yield, and a caveatRoughly 2 1/2 quarts, or eight to ten servings as a first course. Sunchokes are high in inulin, which many people digest poorly; a modest bowl is wiser than a large one on first acquaintance.
Jerusalem artichokes reached Europe from North America in the early seventeenth century and the name is often said to come from a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, rather than from any connection with Jerusalem, though lexicographers dispute the derivation — the plant is a sunflower relative, and the "artichoke" half was borrowed for the taste of the tuber. Cheap, hardy and productive, they were a staple of English kitchen gardens through the nineteenth century, which is why Beeton prices them at 2d. a pound against 1s. 2d. a quart for the finished soup: the cost lay in the butter, the milk and above all the two quarts of white stock, the sort of thing a household with a daily stockpot had for nothing and everyone else had to buy. The soup is a classic potage of the period, thickened by nothing but the vegetable itself, strained smooth and enriched at the last moment.