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Stew Soup (INGREDIENTS for soup)
INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 persons. lb. of beef, mutton or pork; ½ pint of split peas, 4 turnips, 8 potatoes, 2 onions, 2 oz. of oatmeal or 3 oz. of rice, 2 quarts of water. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Cut the meat in small pieces, as also the vegetables, and add them, with the peas, to the water. Boil gently for 3 hours; thicken with the oatmeal, boil for another 1/4 hour, stirring all the time, and season with pepper and salt.
TIME.-3¼ hours.
SEASONABLE in winter. which tripe has been boiled, by adding veget- Note. This soup may be made of the liquor in ables, seasoning, rice, &c.
A frugal one-pot soup from the cheaper end of Mrs Beeton, and the printed text has suffered in transcription: several quantities are garbled. Read the numbers below before you shop.
- The missing meat quantityThe original reads "lb. of beef, mutton or pork" with the figure lost in printing. For eight people with 2 quarts of water, something in the region of 1 to 1 1/2 lb of stewing cut is consistent with the rest of the recipe and with its 10d. cost, but the book does not actually say.
- "1/1 pint of split peas"The fraction is garbled in the printing. Half a pint, roughly 7 to 9 oz of dried split peas, suits the 2 quarts of water better than a full pint, which would tend towards porridge at this ratio; but the intended figure cannot be recovered with certainty.
- Total time"TIME.-34 hours" is 3 1/4 hours: three hours of gentle simmering plus the quarter hour after the oatmeal goes in. Nothing here cooks for a day and a half.
- Peas need no soaking hereSplit peas, unlike whole dried peas, break down without pre-soaking, and three hours at a bare simmer will collapse them into the body of the soup. Keep the heat low or they catch and scorch on the base.
- Oatmeal as thickener2 oz is only a small handful, roughly a third to two thirds of a cup depending on the cut. Use pinhead or medium oatmeal rather than rolled oats; scatter it in with the pan at a low bubble and stir continuously, as the recipe insists, or it sets in lumps.
- Salt at the endThe recipe seasons last, after the thickening. Traditional practice held that salting dried peas early slowed their softening, though this is disputed; in any case the seasoning is easier to judge once the soup has reduced and thickened.
- Vegetable sizesThe recipe counts vegetables rather than weighing them, so figure roughly 2 lb of potatoes for the eight and 1 lb of turnip for the four, cut in pieces no bigger than an inch so they hold shape over three hours.
- The tripe-liquor noteThe closing note suggests building the same soup on water in which tripe has been boiled. Use any well-flavoured meat stock instead; the point is that no cooking liquid was thrown away.
- YieldTwo quarts of water plus meat and vegetables gives eight modest bowls. Expect it to thicken considerably as it stands and to need loosening when reheated.
Stew soup belongs to the section of Victorian cookery books written for households counting pennies rather than courses: the average cost of tenpence for eight people works out at little more than a penny a head, and the recipe is built entirely from split peas, roots and a small piece of cheap meat, with oatmeal or rice doing the work of a roux. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management and its many later abridgements, of which All About Cookery is one, carried a run of these alongside far grander dishes. The closing note about tripe liquor is characteristic of the period's economy: broth from boiling offal was a by-product no careful kitchen poured away, and dried split peas were a common winter store legume in Britain long before the season of the dish, marked here simply as "winter", stopped meaning anything much.