A Soupçon on Soups

Our narrow city house rose four high stories above its basement kitchen and the only mechanical means of communication between the floors were metal speaking tubes which emitted tuneful whistles but not much else. Fortunately, the inside rooms opened on an unsanitary but handy air well, and the whole family, even my dignified mother, found this a much more convenient way of conversing with Jane, our faithful Irish cook. The bang of a raised window always brought her questioning, “Ma’am?” wafting upwards, and the voice that descended generally demanded, “Have we enough soup? There’s going to be company.” Jane must always have hoped for a more unusual message, for her bored, “Yes’m” reechoed glumly as she retreated to her kitchen cave.

Jane guarded her secrets well and just how she produced the never-failing flow of soup was somewhat of a mystery. But since I was to her that paradox, “a young lady who likes to cook,” she broke her rule before I was married and gave me a hint by showing me how to make her wonderful VEGETABLE SOUP. Start it with 3 pounds of beef a half of which should be bone. “Soup meat” is a safe thing to ask for at a reliable butcher’s, or a good combination is 1½ pounds of any cut of lean beef and a shinbone. Cut the meat into inch pieces and brown half of it quickly in a little of its fat in the pot you will use for the soup. Add the rest of the meat and the bones, cover with 4 quarts of cold water, and let it stand for ½ hour. Cover and simmer for 1 hour and add ¼ cup each of chopped carrots, onion, and celery (also turnips if you have them), 1 sprig of parsley, a pinch of thyme, and a bit of bay leaf. Continue simmering, covered, for at least 2 hours longer—all day if you wish—and 1 hour before removing from the fire add 1 tablespoon of salt. Strain and add the pieces of meat and let it cool, covered. There you have the “soup stock” which no well-run kitchen ever used to be without. Nowadays the contents of the red-and-white cans have taken its place and are almost as good, except in this hearty dish. Leave 2 tablespoons of fat on the stock to add to its flavor and remove the rest. Bring the stock to a boil and add 1 can of tomatoes or 1 pint of ripe peeled ones, 1 teaspoon of chopped parsley, and 2 tablespoons of barley or rice. Follow these with 1 teaspoon of sugar, ½ cup each of peeled onions and carrots, the same amount of celery or its leaves, and ¼ cup of cabbage or turnips, all cut into small pieces. Taste for seasoning, add extra salt if needed, and simmer 2 or 3 hours before serving with crackers, biscuits, or toast. Accompany it with a salad for a delicious and nourishing lunch or light supper.

This is just the basic recipe, and, as you get expert, it can be kept going for days. Into the pot goes more new, or any leftover, meat and vegetables and the water they were cooked in. Peas, okra, lima or string beans, corn, asparagus, noodles, spaghetti, macaroni, and potatoes, each and all are good additions. Don’t use too high a proportion of any one thing. Cut the vegetables into pieces. Go carefully with the strongly flavored broccoli, cabbage, and turnips. Keep the ratio of liquid to vegetables 3 or 4 to 1, and if things get too thick add tomato juice, canned consommé, or water.

A very habit-forming dish, and we had it so often one seaside summer that the family call for the afternoon and evening meals became “Soup’s on.” Our untrained maid took it up, and after we went home in the fall it was some time before she could remember, even before company, to return to the conventional, “Dinner is served.”

More quickly prepared and a good imitation of the meatier homemade brand is VEGETABLE SOUP NUMBER 2. It serves four or six. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and in it cook over medium heat ½ cup each of coarsely chopped onion, carrots, and celery or its leaves. Let them get soft but not brown. Add 4 cut-up tomatoes, peeled or canned, and 2 cans of condensed bouillon or consommé which has been diluted with an equal amount of plain water or that in which vegetables have been cooked, and ¼ teaspoon of sugar. Simmer for at least ½ hour, and when in a real hurry put the vegetables through a grinder or food mill before cooking. Season with salt if needed.

VEGETABLE SOUP NUMBER 3, for four or six. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter and soften in it ½ cup each of finely chopped celery leaves, green onion tops, carrots and watercress, and ¼ cup of the outside leaves of lettuce chopped as finely. Add 1 cup of tomato juice and 1 can of condensed consommé diluted with twice its amount of water or cooked vegetable juice. Simmer for ½ hour or longer.

Clear hot soup is the best beginning for a filling dinner or lunch and, although Jane would think you lazy, canned consommé or bouillon answers exceedingly well if its tinned taste is removed. All you have to do to banish tinniness is to dilute the soup with an equal quantity of tomato juice, add a slice of lemon or 1 teaspoon of whipped or sour cream to each serving and a sprinkle of parsley, and you might have stewed and strained over a hot kettle for hours for all the difference in flavor. This is, of course, TOMATO BOUILLON or CONSOMMÉ as the case may be and a dash of curry powder and no cream puts À L’INDIENNE after its first name. Try diluting the condensed soup with only half its quantity of water, put 1 teaspoon of dry sherry in the bottom of each cup and float on a slice of lemon, 1 teaspoon of chopped hard-boiled egg and parsley. Just a good bouillon but no trace of the can. Add a few dice of ripe avocado pear and it’s an IMITATION CLEAR GREEN TURTLE SOUP, and a fine one.

CLAM BISQUE and OYSTER BISQUE are made exactly alike. Add 2 or 3 chopped bivalves to 1 pint of their strained juice and bring to a boil. Make 1 pint of white sauce (page 94). Have it hot in a double boiler and mix in the steaming juice. That is all there is to it, except a warning not to boil the finished product. CLAM CONSOMMÉ is hot strained clam juice, with or without chopped clams, sometimes dressed with a float of whipped cream. CONSOMMÉ BELLEVUE is clear clam juice brought to a boil with an equal quantity of chicken broth and topped with whipped cream and a pinch of chopped chives. A delicious tangy soup to which the famous Philadelphia hotel is proud to give its name.

Dried split green peas are the foundation of three of the finest thick soups there are, and these directions will give you enough to try each one. Read the package carefully and if the peas are not labeled “quick cooking” soak 2 cups of them over night in 1 quart of water and drain. Cut a 2 inch cube of salt pork into dice, fry it until crisp and brown, and reserve. Cook ¼ cup each of chopped onion, carrots, and celery in the fat until soft. Add the soaked peas and 4 cups of water, 1 tablespoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper. Simmer until the peas are tender and soft, keeping them covered with water. Force them through a sieve or food mill. The quick-cooking peas will take about ½ hour, the others from 3 to 4 hours, to cook. For OLD-FASHIONED PEA SOUP melt 1 tablespoon of bacon fat and add 1 tablespoon of flour. Cook over a medium heat for a few minutes and slowly add 4 cups of water and 1½ cups of the strained peas. Let come to a boil and serve topped with the crisp bits of pork. CREAM OF SPLIT PEAS is made by melting 1 tablespoon of butter over a medium heat, stirring in 1 tablespoon of flour and slowly adding 4 cups of thin cream or milk and 1 cup of strained peas. Pass toast croutons with this. PEA MULLIGATAWNY. Prepare butter and flour as above, slowly add 4 cups of tomato juice, 1 cup of strained peas, and ½ teaspoon of curry powder. More curry may be needed, depending upon brand used, but there should be just a suggestion of it in the finished soup. This is an almost undetectable imitation of a much more complicated and difficult soup.

In the spring and early summer, when fresh green peas are abundant, make PEA VICHYSSOISE for four or six. Boil 1 cup of peas in enough chicken broth to cover them—about 2 cups—until tender, and put through a sieve or food mill. Prepare butter and flour as above, slowly stir in 3 cups of thin cream or top milk and the sieved peas, and let come to a boil. Taste for salt and serve it in your best soup cups, each cup floating ½ teaspoon of finely chopped chives or green onion tops, for the perfect start of a luncheon. Thin warm Melba toast should go along.

BORSCH is vegetable soup with a Russian accent. For four or six, soften 1 cup of shredded cabbage and 1 tablespoon each of chopped onion and carrot in 2 tablespoons of butter. Add 1 cup of chopped canned beets, ½ cup of their juice, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, and 5 cups of beef stock with a few pieces of the cooked meat, or 3 cups of canned consommé or bouillon and 2 cups of water. Simmer for at least 1 hour. Season with salt if necessary and serve with a tablespoon of sour cream on each helping.

The traditional Christmas Eve dish in our house is FRENCH ONION SOUP. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter, add 1 tablespoon of finely chopped celery leaves, 1 tablespoon of grated carrot, and 3 cups of thinly sliced onions separated into rings. Cover and cook over a medium fire until the onions are very soft and yellow. Add 5 cups of stock or 3 cups of condensed bouillon and 2 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese. Let simmer 45 minutes, covered, and taste for salt. You will find this to be a more oniony soup than the usual kind but, as the cross old lady said when a stranger told her that her slip was showing, “I like it that way.” Serve it to four or six on thick slices of toasted French bread and pass grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. Don’t, if you can help it, use for this or for any other recipe calling for grated Parmesan, the grated pasteurized “Italian Type,” whatever that means. It is the kind that comes sealed in shaker-top cans with all its real flavor killed. Almost any Italian grocery carries a variety of hard cheeses. There must be such a one somewhere near you and the proprietor will be glad to advise your selection and often grate it for you. Or take a quarter pound home and do your own grating. You’ll have twice as much for half the money, and much better at that. I made a permanent friend of a dignified bank president by sending him every week during a long hospital convalescence a gaily decorated package containing a pint of onion soup, two pieces of toast, and an envelope of grated cheese. It was his favorite dish, but frowned on in his home; at last, he happily maintained, he could enjoy it unmolested. I can’t believe that the soup is accepted sickroom diet but I do know that a steaming cup as a “morning after” pickup will restore one kind of invalid to full health in a miraculously short time.

CHESAPEAKE BOUILLABAISSE is the best fish soup in the world this side of Marseille. For four or six, heat ½ cup of olive oil—no substitutes here, please—and soften in it ¾ cup of chopped onions, 1 chopped garlic clove, 1 tablespoon of grated carrot, and 1 tablespoon of chopped celery leaves. Add a pinch of fresh dill, rosemary, and basil, if you have them. Add 4 skinned or canned tomatoes, 1 inch of lemon peel shredded, and simmer 15 minutes. Put the bones from 2½ pounds of filleted fish, and 2 fish heads, if possible, in a saucepan and lay the fish on top. Add 2 slices of onion, a small piece each of bay leaf and mace and 6 peppercorns. Cover with 3 cups of water and 1 cup of white wine. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and simmer until the fish is just tender. Remove it and reserve. Simmer the fish bones and heads at least 1 hour longer in the same liquid. Strain, add water if necessary to make 4 cups. Add it to the vegetables and let simmer, covered, 1 hour longer. Add ½ cup of canned mussels and ½ cup of shelled cooked shrimps, canned or fresh; cooked lobster or crab meat can go in this, too, in ½ cup quantities. Add the cooked fish, bring to a quick boil, add extra salt if necessary, and serve each helping over a piece of toasted French bread. Any kind of fish, fresh or frozen, is good in this, but try to have at least two, or better, three varieties. If the fish are small, remove as many bones as possible after cooking and before adding to the cooked stock. Add a pinch of powdered saffron from the drugstore, if you want to go completely Thackeray. This recipe might make a French bouillabaisse enthusiast shudder—before he tasted it—but it is delicious and filling and after all there is no reason why we shouldn’t be culinary trailblazers on this side of the ocean, too.

Hearty LENTIL SOUP seems to be an almost forgotten dish. Soak 1½ cups of lentils overnight and drain. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter, soften in it 2 tablespoons of chopped onion, 1 tablespoon of chopped carrot and 1 tablespoon of chopped celery leaves. Add the lentils, 8 cups of water, 2 teaspoons of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and a pinch of cayenne, and simmer until the lentils are very soft. Remove from the fire and break up the lentils a little, with a potato masher or heavy spoon. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter, add 1 tablespoon of flour, blend, and slowly add the lentils. Add 2 frankfurters cut in thin slices, simmer, covered, 15 minutes, and serve. On a cold blustery day, “when the wind goes ’who-oo,’ ” no goblins—or gremlins—will ever git you with a big bowl of this tucked under your belt.