Split Pea Soup
Split pea soup is delicious when well made, and in cold weather, sufficient can be prepared to be served another day. This is suggested because of the long cooking necessary. The peas should be picked over and soaked over night, covered with fresh cold water and heated quickly to the simmering point. This water is drained off, fresh boiling water added and then kept steadily at a very low simmer until the peas are reduced to a pulp; this will take from three to five hours. It is then strained and a slight thickening added to keep the pulp evenly diffused through the liquid. To this plain foundation there may be added at various times a ham bone, an onion baked in the oven until brown all through, a little powdered thyme or various dried herbs. Such additions will vary the flavor and permt it to be served more frequently. Black bean soup is prepared in the same way, but there should be added just before serving some thin slices of lemon and hard boiled eggs cut in squares; epicures also add to the tureen a few spoonfuls of Madeira.
A method rather than a formula: no quantities are given at all, so treat the proportions as your own. The one thing worth carrying over intact is the two-water technique.
- ProportionsA workable ratio is 1 lb (about 2 cups) dried split peas to 8-10 cups liquid, which yields roughly 2 quarts of finished soup, or six to eight servings. Start at the lower end of the water and thin later.
- The two watersSoaking, then discarding the first heating water and starting again with fresh boiling water, is not fussiness: it carries off some of the soluble oligosaccharides associated with digestive trouble, and many cooks find the result tastes cleaner and less earthy.
- Cooking timeThe book's three to five hours is far longer than today's commercially split peas need; they collapse to pulp in 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, so check at 45 minutes and stop when they break down. Sit them at a bare simmer as directed, since a hard boil risks scorching starch on the pan bottom.
- Hard water and acidPeas that refuse to soften are usually fighting hard water or an early addition of acid. Hold back tomato, vinegar or wine until the peas have gone to pulp.
- The thickening"A slight thickening" means a small roux or a flour-and-water slurry, perhaps 1 tablespoon flour whisked smooth. Its job is to hold the pulp in suspension rather than to add body. If you would rather not, an immersion blender or a second pass through the sieve does the same work.
- StrainingThe recipe finishes by straining, and sieving was a common treatment for smooth soups of this period. Skipping it gives a rustic, slightly grainy soup, which is perfectly good but is not what the book directs.
- The baked onionAn onion baked whole until brown all through is a genuinely useful trick: it contributes a deep sweetness without any fried edge. The book gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 375F for about an hour, will do it, after which the flesh can be squeezed into the pot.
- Ham bone and saltIf you add a ham bone, salt only at the end. Smoked bones vary enormously and it is easy to overshoot.
- Black bean variationBlack turtle beans need longer than split peas, typically 1.5 to 2 hours after soaking, and they will not go to pulp on their own the way peas do. Add the lemon, chopped hard-boiled egg and Madeira off the heat at the table, as written; boiling the Madeira wastes it.
- Keeping itThe suggestion to make enough for a second day still holds. It thickens considerably on cooling, sometimes to a sliceable paste, and wants stock or water when reheated. Refrigerate within two hours and use within three or four days.
Dried pea soup is one of the oldest continuously cooked dishes in Europe, valued because split peas keep for years, need no refrigeration and turn to thick pottage with nothing but water and time. Its appearance here, with a candid warning about the "long cooking necessary," places it squarely in the economical end of a turn-of-the-century American household: the ham bone is a leftover, the baked onion costs nothing, and the pot stretches across two days of meals. The black bean variation given at the end is the American restaurant version of the same idea, finished with a garnish of lemon, chopped egg and a glass of Madeira poured into the tureen. That the author calls the Madeira drinkers "epicures" tells you the plain foundation was the expected version and the wine was the flourish.