Lentil Soup
(Bavaria.) Soak 1 pint of lentils overnight, drain them, and add 1 quart of stock and 1 pint of water, some parsley, 2 leeks, a bit of celery, 2 ounces of chopped ham, an onion, and a carrot. Cook 3 hours, rub through a sieve, add the juice of a lemon, salt, and pepper. If not thick and smooth, add a tablespoonful of flour, mixed with as much butter.
A straightforward purée-style lentil soup that needs only a few adjustments in translation. The measurements are by volume throughout, which is how dried pulses were normally sold and measured.
- Lentils by volumeA pint of dried lentils is about 2 cups, roughly 14 oz. Brown or green lentils suit this best; red lentils collapse to mush and defeat the point of sieving.
- Soaking is optional nowLentils sold today are generally fresher than loose stock of the period, and an overnight soak is not strictly necessary. If you skip it, expect the cooking to run a little longer and the liquid to reduce more.
- Three hours is far too longSoaked lentils are soft in 30 to 40 minutes, unsoaked in about an hour. The original time reflects older, harder stock and a stove kept at a low simmer all afternoon. Cook until the lentils crush against the side of the pan and stop there, or the vegetable flavour cooks flat.
- Sieve or blender"Rub through a sieve" produces a smooth purée with the lentil skins left behind. A stick blender gets you most of the way; pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the texture the recipe intends.
- The hamTwo ounces of chopped ham is a seasoning, not a meat course. A piece of raw smoked ham, speck or a ham hock added at the start gives more than diced cooked ham stirred in.
- Liquid and consistencyOne quart stock plus one pint water is 6 cups for 2 cups of lentils, which after sieving is thick. Hold back some of the water and adjust at the end; the recipe's flour-and-butter thickening is a beurre manié, kneaded raw and whisked in, then simmered a few minutes to lose the raw taste.
- Lemon last, off the heatThe juice of a whole lemon is assertive and is what keeps the soup from tasting heavy. Add it after the pan is off the heat and taste as you go; acid added early dulls in long cooking.
- YieldRoughly six to eight small first-course servings, or about four as a main, depending on how far it reduces. It thickens considerably on standing and will want thinning when reheated.
Lentil soup with a smoked-pork accent is a fixture of southern German cooking, where the pulse (Linsen) has been a winter staple far longer than the potato. The Bavarian attribution here matters less than the method: sieving a legume soup to a smooth puree was a common genteel treatment of pulses in late nineteenth-century cookery. The local dish is reduced to a compact paragraph, and the finishing lemon and beurre manie both point toward French technique.