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Black Bean Soup (Pint black beans quarts cold)
1 pint black beans 2 quarts cold water 1 small onion 2 stalks celery, or ¼ teaspoon celery salt ½ tablespoon salt 1 lemon 1/8 teaspoon pepper ¼ teaspoon mustard Few grains cayenne 3 tablespoons butter 1½ tablespoons flour 2 "hard-boiled" eggs Soak beans over night; in the morning drain and add cold water. Slice onion, and cook five minutes with half the butter, adding to beans, with celery stalks broken in pieces, Simmer three or four hours, or until beans are soft; add more water as water boils away. Rub through a sieve, reheat to the boiling-point, and add salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne well mixed. Bind with remaining butter and flour cooked together. Cut eggs in thin slices, and lemon in thin slices, removing seeds. Put in tureen, and strain the soup over them.
A Fannie Farmer-era purée thickened with a butter-and-flour binding and served over lemon and egg. It needs almost nothing changed beyond the units and a little attention to the straining.
- YieldA pint of dry black beans is about 14 oz and swells to roughly 4 cups soaked. With two quarts of water reduced over several hours, expect six to eight servings.
- The fractionsRead the celery salt and the mustard as 1/4 teaspoon each. The salt at 1 1/2 tablespoons is aimed at unsalted beans cooked in plain water; add half at first and correct at the end.
- Soaking and cooking timeAn overnight soak plus three to four hours of simmering reflects older, drier beans. Recently harvested beans may be soft in 90 minutes to two hours. Cook until they crush easily against the pot, not by the clock.
- Salt timingThe salt goes in only after sieving. Modern testing shows salted soaking water does not toughen beans, so you can salt earlier if you prefer a more evenly seasoned puree.
- SievingRubbing through a sieve is the step that gives this soup its texture. A food mill with the medium plate does the same job in a fraction of the time and holds back the skins; a blender will puree the skins in rather than hold them back.
- The bindingCook the remaining butter and flour together to a blond roux, then whisk in a ladleful of hot soup before returning it to the pot. Added dry to a boiling purée it will lump.
- CeleryTwo stalks broken in pieces are pulled out or sieved out; they flavor rather than thicken. Use the celery salt only as a substitute, and cut the added salt accordingly.
- Lemon and eggBoth go in the tureen cold and the hot soup is strained over them. Slice thin, seed the lemon carefully, and serve at once: the lemon turns bitter if it sits in hot soup, and the yolks crumble.
Black bean soup finished with lemon and hard-boiled egg is often said to have been a familiar garnish in American restaurant cooking of the late nineteenth century. Its place here, among the soups made without stock, matters: Fannie Farmer's book divided soups by whether they began with a meat broth, and this one earns its depth entirely from long-simmered legumes, a small onion sweated in butter and a sharp seasoning mixture of mustard, cayenne and pepper.