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Cream of Potato Soup
4 medium-sized potatoes medium-sized onion 2 tablespoons fat 1 quart of milk 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt teaspoon pepper Pare potatoes very thin and cook, in enough water to cover, until soft. Drain off water and save. Rub potatoes through a sieve. Heat milk, onion and potato water (about 1 cup) in double boiler. Remove onion and add to potatoes. Melt fat, mix with flour. Stir into hot soup. Season and serve hot. Two tablespoons of finely chopped parsley added just before serving adds greatly to the attractiveness of the soup. 3 cups celery, cut in inch pieces 2 cups boiling water
A plain white soup of the 1920s-30s type, thickened with a flour-and-fat paste stirred in at the end rather than a roux built at the start. A few gaps in the printed text need filling before you cook.
- Missing quantitiesThe ingredient list has dropped its fractions in printing: read it as 1 medium onion, and a small amount of pepper (probably 1/8 or 1/4 teaspoon — the printed text gives no way to tell). The 2 tablespoons of fat means butter, lard, or bacon drippings — butter is the safest choice for a milk soup.
- Stray lines at the end"3 cups celery, cut in inch pieces" and "2 cups boiling water" are the opening ingredients of the next recipe in the section, not part of this one. Ignore them.
- The onion is a flavouring, not a vegetableIt is heated in the milk to infuse and then lifted out, so it must be left in a large enough piece to retrieve. The line "Remove onion and add to potatoes" is best read as: take out the onion and add the milk mixture to the sieved potato, discarding the onion.
- Why the double boilerMilk scorches and skins over on direct heat, and potato starch makes it catch faster. A heavy-bottomed pan over low heat works if you stir, but the double boiler is genuinely the reliable method here.
- Save the cooking waterAbout 1 cup of the potato water goes back in, adding potato flavour to the milk. The flour is modest for a quart of milk because the sieved potato purée supplies most of the body.
- Sieve, not blenderRubbing cooked potato through a sieve gives a smooth purée. A food mill or ricer does the same job. A blender or food processor overworks the starch and turns the soup gluey.
- Thickening at the endThe fat and flour are mixed to a paste and stirred into the hot soup, so cook it a further 3-5 minutes at a bare simmer to lose the raw flour taste. Add it in small pieces while whisking to avoid lumps.
- YieldAbout 6 to 7 cups — four generous servings as a first course. Season aggressively at the end; potato and milk both swallow salt.
Cream soups like this one were the backbone of American home-economics cookery in the first half of the twentieth century: a starchy vegetable, a quart of milk, a spoonful of flour and fat, and a lump of onion pulled out before serving. The pattern was taught as a formula rather than a recipe, so a single method covered potato, celery, corn, asparagus and pea. Milk-based soups were also promoted hard in this period by dairy interests and by nutrition educators pushing a quart of milk a day, and cookbooks of the era carried that message into kitchens along with the arithmetic. The chopped parsley finish, offered here for "attractiveness," reflects the same era's concern that plain white food be made to look like something.