Home › Soup's On! › Huckleberry Soup
Huckleberry Soup
Add to 1 quart huckleberries 1 quart water, 2 tablespoons fine bread crumbs, 4 tablespoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a bit of stick cinnamon. Cook a few minutes and press through sieve. Serve with flour dumplings cooked in soup. Best when eaten lukewarm.
A thin sweet fruit soup of the Northern European kind, thickened with breadcrumbs rather than starch. It comes together in about fifteen minutes and is meant to be served barely warm.
- QuantitiesA quart of huckleberries is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb; a quart of water is 4 cups. No yield is given, but the finished quantity would serve about four as a first or last course.
- HuckleberriesTrue huckleberries are a wild gathered fruit, tarter and seedier than cultivated blueberries. Blueberries substitute directly, but taste before sweetening and expect to add a little lemon juice to make up the missing acid.
- Breadcrumbs as thickenerUse dry fine crumbs from a plain white loaf, not seasoned or panko crumbs. Two tablespoons in a quart of liquid gives only a light body; the soup should coat a spoon thinly, not set.
- Cook briefly"A few minutes" means just until the berries burst, about five. Longer boiling drives off the fresh fruit flavour and leaves a stewed, jammy taste.
- SievingPress through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle to leave skins and seeds behind. Remove the cinnamon stick first, and do not force the pulp through a very fine mesh or the crumbs will be strained out along with it.
- The dumplingsNo dumpling recipe is given here. Any plain drop dumpling of flour, egg and a little milk will do; poach them in the soup after sieving, in gently simmering rather than boiling liquid, so they hold together.
- Serving temperatureThe instruction to eat it lukewarm is not incidental. Warm, the sweetness and spice read clearly; hot it tastes flat, and fridge-cold it needs noticeably more sugar.