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Made Without Meat
In your soup pot put about a quarter of a pound of butter, set on the stove, slice into it four large onions; fry them a nice brown, stirring all the time. Now put in four quarts of cold water, one large coffee cupful of split peas previously washed; boil four hours. Before serving stir smartly with your potato-masher, strain through a colander into your tureen. Many like tomato catsup in this, but it is better to serve that separate.
A meatless split pea soup that leans entirely on browned onions for its depth. Two things need attention: the ratio of peas to water, and the four-hour boil.
- The hinge is the onionsWith no ham bone or stock, the browned onions supply all the savour. Take them well past translucent to a genuine deep brown over medium heat, 20 to 30 minutes, scraping up what sticks. Rushing this gives a flat, watery soup.
- A coffee cupfulNineteenth-century coffee cups ran smaller than modern mugs; read this as about one cup, perhaps a generous one. The measurement is genuinely imprecise, so judge by the finished body rather than the scoop.
- Peas to waterOne cup of split peas to four quarts of water is very thin by modern taste. A four-hour boil would have driven off a good deal of the liquid, though the recipe says nothing about covering the pot or about the finished volume. Either start with two to three quarts, or plan to cook uncovered until it thickens.
- Four hours is too longSplit peas collapse in 45 to 90 minutes. Beyond that you are only evaporating water. Cook until the peas break apart, then reduce further only if you want it thicker.
- A quarter pound of butterThat is one stick, 4 oz or 115 g, for four quarts. Generous but not out of range for a soup with no meat fat in it; half that works if the onions are browned patiently.
- StrainingMashing and pushing through a colander gives a rustic, slightly coarse purée with the onion fibre left behind. A blender gives a smoother result the original cook could not have had; either is faithful to the intent.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified. Salt during the last half hour of cooking and taste again after straining, since reduction concentrates it.
- YieldAs written, six to eight servings, depending on how far it is reduced. The tomato catsup served separately functions much as a dash of vinegar or Worcestershire would now, sharpening a soup that is otherwise all sweetness and starch.
Split pea soup without meat is an old thrift dish in the English-speaking kitchen, and dried peas were a winter staple long before canned goods reached the household pantry. The catsup at the end points to a nineteenth-century North American context: tomato catsup was by then available as a commercial bottled condiment, used much the way hot sauce or Worcestershire is used now, to lift a plain dish. The section heading, "Made Without Meat," reflects a familiar concern in community cookbooks of the era, where meatless recipes might be gathered for Lent and fast days as much as for weeks when the household budget did not stretch to a joint.