A Plain, Cheap Soup
The Challenge
Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge Season 4, Number 2: Downstairs Dinner. Make a dish of the working classes.The Recipe
This recipe comes from The Practical Cookbook (Philadelphia, 1850)
What I Did / The Method
Ingredients
Leftover meat bones: I used the carcass of a roast chicken
Two large carrots, peeled and chopped
Three small turnips, peeled and chopped
One large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
2 whole cloves
salt and pepper
water
Method
Being used to making soup from scratch on a frequent basis, this concept felt very easy and familiar. I placed the chicken carcass in a large pot and liberally covered it with water, then let it cook for several hours until the meat fell off the bones.At this point I refrigerated the entire soup, but that was because of the way my timing worked. You could continue on with the soup still hot, but it IS easier to remove the bones and meat from a cold stock.
Remove all the bones from the soup. Depressingly, period recipes tend to NOT like the meat in the soup, frequently calling such meat "ragged bits" and unfit for the table. I removed all the meat from the stock as well.
Return the stock to the stove and add the chopped vegetables and the cloves. Cook until the vegetables are very mushy.
Once the vegetables are very soft, remove the soup from the stove and puree the vegetables into the liquid. Using modern techniques, and immersion blender would work extremely well. I chose to use a metal sieve (since I do not own a horsehair sieve) and my wooden masher, mashing and straining the vegetables through the sieve. The mashing was surprisingly tiring.
Retuning the soup to the stove, I reheated it, tasted, and added salt and pepper to taste.
My sippets were actually toasted French bread, rather than the triangular pieces of sliced bread.
As you can see, the soup has a definite thickness to it, although it is smooth.
Cost
Definitely an inexpensive meal - the vegetables cost less than $5 all told and the chicken carcass was a leftover.
How Accurate Was It?
As far as I can tell, pretty accurate. One variable is the quantity of meat bones for the stock - it is possible that more bones were used, which would result in a more complex stock.
Evaluation
The soup came together easily, so in that sense it was successful.
The taste was surprising. I am not a fan of the peppery taste of raw turnips, but when the turnips cook, they turn sweet. I found the flavor to be nice - not my favorite, but nice. My husband hated it, so ultimately it was a failure. We both found the soup to be light; even though it had a thickness, it did not fill. My husband's comment was, "Vegetable flavored water." Lightness makes sense, since soup was normally one course in a heavier meal. Perhaps my husband might have been more favorably inclined if I followed up the soup with other courses, but I planned on the soup being our main course.
The taste was surprising. I am not a fan of the peppery taste of raw turnips, but when the turnips cook, they turn sweet. I found the flavor to be nice - not my favorite, but nice. My husband hated it, so ultimately it was a failure. We both found the soup to be light; even though it had a thickness, it did not fill. My husband's comment was, "Vegetable flavored water." Lightness makes sense, since soup was normally one course in a heavier meal. Perhaps my husband might have been more favorably inclined if I followed up the soup with other courses, but I planned on the soup being our main course.
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