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White Bean Soup
Use three quarts of soup stock to each breakfast cupful of vegetables, such as onions, carrots and turnips, cut up into small pieces, having more of the onions than of the rest of the vegetables, and three breakfast cupfuls of white beans. Boil for an hour, then add a very little flour moistened, and salt and pepper to taste, sprinkling in a little parsley. Turn the soup into a tureen and serve.
A plain hotel soup written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen, where stock was always on hand and quantities were scaled by the cupful. Two things need attention: the state of the beans and the vagueness of the thickening.
- The beans decide the timingThe recipe does not say whether the beans are dried or already cooked, and a hotel kitchen may well have had beans cooked separately as part of the day's routine. Unsoaked dried white beans (navy, marrow or similar) will not be tender in the hour given; soak them, or count on 1½ to 2 hours of simmering before the vegetables are added.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup of the period was larger than a teacup, reckoned at somewhere around 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so read it as a generous cup. Three cupfuls of dried beans is about 1¼ lb, which will swell to roughly 6 to 9 cups cooked.
- Proportions as writtenThree quarts of stock to three cups of dried beans plus a cup of vegetables gives a thick, almost porridge-like soup once the beans soften. Thin with more stock if you want a spoonable rather than a stiff result.
- Soup stockThe recipe says only "soup stock". A good low-sodium chicken or beef stock stands in; season at the end, as the recipe directs, because the beans absorb salt unevenly.
- More onion than anything elseThis is the flavour hinge and it is easy to skim past. The onion should outweigh the carrot and turnip combined, and it is worth sweating the vegetables in a little butter before they go in rather than simply boiling them.
- The moistened flour"A very little flour moistened" means a thin slurry of flour and cold water or stock, whisked in and simmered a few minutes to lose its raw taste. With this many beans you may need none at all; add it only if the soup looks watery after the beans have broken down.
- Sieve or leave itPurée-style bean soups of the period were sometimes passed through a sieve for smoothness, though this recipe does not call for it; blending half the pot and stirring it back gives body without losing texture.
- YieldSomewhat over three quarts once the beans and vegetables are added, or roughly ten to twelve first-course servings. It thickens considerably overnight and will need loosening with stock when reheated.
White bean soup was a fixture of nineteenth-century American hotel and boarding-house cookery for the obvious reason: dried beans kept indefinitely, cost almost nothing, and turned yesterday's stock pot into a full course. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's legendary ma tre d'h tel, compiled his 1896 Cook Book in a register that reads as instructions to a cook who already knows the trade rather than to a housekeeper. The reliance on a standing stock, the scaling by cupful per three quarts, and the casual "a very little flour moistened" all belong to a brigade kitchen. The pairing of beans with an onion-heavy mirepoix and a flour liaison is broadly French in method, though bean soup itself was thoroughly domestic.