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Cream of Lima Beans
Put a lump of butter in a saucepan with half a pint of mirepoix, a little flour and the Lima beans, seasoned with salt. Moisten them with some white broth, and cook for thirty minutes. Strain them through a sieve, and serve with some cream and small croutons souffles.
A classic hotel purée soup written in professional shorthand: Oscar assumes a cook who already has stock, mirepoix and a fine sieve at hand. The quantities are left to judgment, so the proportions below are the useful part.
- Quantities, since none are givenFor four to six servings, work from about 1 lb shelled fresh or frozen lima beans, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp flour, and 5-6 cups white stock. The half pint of mirepoix is a full cup, which is generous and is meant to be tasted.
- What mirepoix means hereIn a kitchen of this period mirepoix is diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a little raw ham or bacon and a bay leaf, sweated in butter until soft but not coloured. It is a flavouring base, not a garnish, and it goes through the sieve with everything else.
- White brothWhite stock: veal or chicken bones simmered without browning, so the finished soup stays pale. A light unsalted chicken stock is the closest modern equivalent. The recipe salts the beans at the start; if your stock is already salted, hold back and correct the seasoning at the end, since the purée reduces as it cooks.
- Fresh beans, not driedThirty minutes only works for fresh or frozen limas. Dried limas need soaking and an hour or more of simmering before they will pass a sieve, and they want extra stock to compensate.
- StrainingA drum sieve and wooden pestle was the tool intended. A blender or food processor followed by a pass through a fine chinois gives the same texture faster; the sieving step is what separates this from a bean soup, so do not skip it. Skins will not break down and must be left behind.
- The cream goes in off the heatAdd about a cup of hot cream to the strained purée and bring it back only to a bare steam. Boiling after the cream is in will thin the body and can break the soup, and the flour in the base is there to hold it, not to thicken it heavily.
- Croutons soufflésNot toasted cubes. Thin squares of crustless bread deep-fried in hot fat, hot enough that they puff hollow as they colour (around 375F in modern terms; the book gives no temperature). Fry them at the last minute and salt them while hot.
- ConsistencyA purée soup of this school should coat a spoon lightly and pour cleanly. If it has tightened while sitting, loosen with more hot stock rather than more cream.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the working repertoire of the Waldorf kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, when the French purée soups — Saint-Germain of peas, soubise of onion, and this lima version — were fixed items on American hotel menus. Lima beans are an American ingredient handled by an entirely French method: the mirepoix base, the white stock, the sieve, the cream liaison and the fried croutons are the standard apparatus of the potage purée. The name is traditionally traced to the Peruvian capital, though the species was domesticated in both South and Central America long before the bean became a fixture of the eastern seaboard garden. The extreme brevity here is typical of the book: it was compiled from a professional kitchen's notes, and assumes the reader knows what mirepoix is and how much of everything to use.