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CREAM OF SPINACH SOUP (Use the same recipe)
Use the same recipe as for lettuce soup, allowing two quarts of spinach to one pint of stock, and add one-fourth teaspoon of sugar to the recipe.
SPLIT PEA SOUP (With Stock) -Put the end of a moderately lean smoked ham weighing two or three pounds into a kettle with one small carrot, one onion, two medium-sized, peeled, whole potatoes and three quarts of boiling water. Boil one hour and strain. Now rinse the ham thoroughly in hot water and return to the strained stock, together with one cup of split peas which have been soaking all night, and boil for one hour. Season with salt and white pepper and add two or three tablespoons of catsup. Serve at once. Thin with boiling water if too thick.
Two recipes run together here: a one-line variation on an earlier cream soup, and a full split pea soup built on a ham stock. The pea soup stands on its own; the spinach note does not.
- The spinach soup needs its parent recipe"the same recipe as for lettuce soup" points back to the book's cream soup method, which is not reproduced here; on the evidence of the title it would involve cooked, sieved greens combined with a milk-based sauce and the stock, but the page itself does not say. Without that page in front of you the spinach line is only a set of proportions: 2 quarts of leaves to 1 pint of stock, plus a quarter teaspoon of sugar.
- Two quarts of spinachTaken as loosely packed raw leaves that is somewhere around 8-12 oz, cooking down to roughly a cupful of puree. The quarter teaspoon of sugar is too small an amount to sweeten the soup; it is more likely there to soften the flavour of hard-cooked spinach, though the recipe gives no reason.
- The ham endA "moderately lean smoked ham" end of 2-3 lb is closest today to a smoked ham hock or a piece of shank. Saltiness varies a great deal between cured products, so hold back the salt until the peas are soft and taste first.
- Why the ham is rinsedThe recipe has you strain after the first hour and rinse the meat in hot water before returning it, which will carry off the scum, the spent vegetables and some surface salt. The reason is not stated, but skipping it risks a saltier finished soup.
- The carrot, onion and potatoes are discardedThey flavour and lightly thicken the first stock and are strained out with everything else. Nothing is meant to be returned to the pot except the ham.
- An hour may not soften the peasOvernight-soaked split peas usually want 60-90 minutes at a bare simmer; older dried peas can take longer still, and hard water can keep them firm. Cook until they collapse rather than by the clock.
- Catsup in 1911Catsup -- Bottled tomato catsup of the period covered a wide range, some of it thinner, sharper and more heavily spiced than the modern product. Two or three tablespoons of today's ketchup may read sweeter than intended; start with less and add a little vinegar if you want more edge.
- YieldThree quarts of water reduced over two hours gives roughly six generous servings. The instruction to thin with boiling water matters: split pea soup thickens sharply as it stands and again when reheated.
Split pea soup built on a ham bone is one of the oldest economies in the European kitchen — dried peas kept through winter when nothing green did, and the smoked end of a ham, too awkward to carve, gave salt, fat and body to a pot of them. The finishing catsup belongs to a long-established habit of brightening a heavy brown soup with a bottled tomato condiment rather than with wine or lemon. The Butterick Publishing Company was a dress-pattern house, and its cook book was aimed at the same readership as its patterns: women running a household on a budget and expected to get two dishes out of one ham. The spinach note above it works the same way as the pea soup: greens, sieve, white sauce, stock.