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Starvation Soup
If you have a pork-bone from the fresh meat, let it boil in water for an hour. Put the pan to cool and take off the fat, and remove the bone. Replace the pan on the fire and throw into it two pounds of Brussels sprouts. Do not add onions to this soup but leeks, and the hearts of cabbage. Pepper and spice to taste. Rub it through a sieve and let it be thick enough to form a thin puree. Immediate Soup, or Ten Minutes Soup Into a quart of boiling water throw two tablespoonfuls of either semolina or tapioca: let it boil for eight minutes with a dust of salt and pepper. Meanwhile, take your tureen, put quickly into it two yolks of very fresh eggs, add two pats of butter and two small spoonfuls of water to mix it. Stir quickly with the spoon, and when the soup has done its eight minutes' boiling, pour it on the egg and butter in the tureen. This is an extremely good soup. It is rendered still better by a small quantity of Bovril.
Two soups run together on one page: a sprout-and-leek puree built on a pork bone, and a ten-minute semolina soup finished with an egg-and-butter liaison. Both assume a cook working with whatever is in the house.
- The boneA fresh pork bone means an uncured, uncooked one — a hock, rib rack or shoulder bone with some meat clinging to it. Smoked or cured bones will push the soup salty and change its character entirely. An hour of simmering gives a light broth; two hours gives a better one if you have the time.
- Chilling to degreaseCooling the pan and lifting the fat is the whole reason for the two-stage method. Refrigerate until the fat sets in a solid cap, then lift it off. Skimming hot only gets part of it.
- Liquid quantityNone is given. For two pounds of sprouts plus leeks and cabbage hearts, start with about 2 quarts of water on the bone and thin the finished puree with more broth or water until it pours.
- "Spice to taste"Nutmeg is a plausible reading here, and a scrape of it suits sprouts and cabbage well. A bay leaf and a few peppercorns in the bone broth would not be out of place.
- SievingThe sieve is doing what a blender does now. Blend the vegetables with some broth, then pass through a sieve if you want the silky texture the original intends — sprout and cabbage skins do not break down completely.
- YieldThe sprout soup serves four to six as a first course. The semolina soup, from a quart of water, serves three to four in small bowls.
- The egg liaisonTwo tablespoons of semolina or tapioca in a quart of water gives a very thin soup; the yolks and butter in the tureen are what give it body. Whisk while pouring so the yolks thicken rather than scramble, and do not return the tureen to heat. Note that the yolks are warmed rather than properly cooked — use pasteurized eggs if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- BovrilStill sold, still a concentrated beef extract, though the formulation has changed over the years. A teaspoon is plenty for a quart. Any beef or vegetable bouillon concentrate does the same job.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion, and its proceeds went to relief work. The name of this first soup is not a joke: occupied Belgium was under blockade and dependent on imported grain distributed by the Commission for Relief in Belgium, and "starvation soup" is the sort of dish a household makes from a stripped bone and whatever winter vegetables the garden still holds. Brussels sprouts and leeks are the Belgian kitchen's ordinary standbys rather than a hardship substitute, which is part of the point — the recipe reads as a normal soup with the meat taken out of it. The second soup, with its egg-and-butter liaison poured into the tureen, belongs to the same French-influenced domestic tradition and shows how far two yolks and a scrap of beef extract can be made to go.