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Potato and Celery Soup
Follow the directions for Potato Soup, adding to the water a cup of celery tips and coarse stalks measured after putting through the food chopper. Boil ten minutes, combine and sift.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe, and it assumes you have the book's Potato Soup in front of you: potatoes cooked in water, then combined with scalded milk thickened with a butter-and-flour roux, and sieved. Everything below concerns the changes the celery introduces.
- "Food chopper"A hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the table, which shredded rather than pureed. A food processor pulsed a few times gives the same effect; a knife works too, since the celery is strained out later anyway.
- Celery tips and coarse stalksThe leafy tops and the tough outer ribs, i.e. the trimmings you would otherwise discard. The instruction is plainly one of economy, and such trim is often said to carry more flavour than the pale inner hearts. The cup is measured after chopping, as the recipe states; roughly speaking, the trim off a head of celery.
- Add it to the potato waterThe celery goes into the water with the potatoes, not into the milk. The recipe gives ten minutes' boiling to draw out the flavour.
- "Combine and sift"Combine the potato water with the thickened milk, then push the whole thing through a fine sieve or food mill. This is where the celery fibre is removed, so do not skip it — a blender alone will leave stringy threads suspended in the soup.
- SeasoningThe original leaves salt to the base recipe, so taste after sifting. White pepper and a little celery salt are period-appropriate finishes.
- YieldDepends entirely on the book's Potato Soup, which is not reproduced here. Serve hot, with croutons or crackers.
Cream soups of this kind are generally associated with the American luncheon table around the turn of the twentieth century, and cookbooks of the period often printed them as families of variations: one master potato soup, then a line or two each for celery, onion, watercress or tomato. The economy here is deliberate and characteristic: the recipe calls for celery tips and coarse stalks, the parts of the head that were commonly trimmed away, at a time when celery is often said to have been a somewhat fashionable relish rather than a background vegetable. Passing them through the food chopper, a widespread kitchen fixture before electric appliances, extracted flavour from material that would otherwise have gone to the stockpot or the bin. The sieving step reflects the era's taste for smooth, pale, uniform soups, perhaps a domestic echo of the French purées that professional kitchens had made the mark of refinement.