Potato Purée

Ingredients

• a quart of soup
• half an ounce of thickening to a pint of soup
• a pint of soup

Method

1. 1

   To make potato purée, first prepare your soup base.

2. 2

   Use a hair sieve to rub the vegetables through, mixing them back into the liquor and boiling again before serving.

3. 3

   Ensure the soup is well-flavored and seasoned.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The girl's own cookery book (1882) by Phillis Browne, page 44. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

a quart of soup to begin with, and if it is liked they can make a quart of another kind another day. Fresh herbs are excellent for flavouring soup ; tarragon leaves especially impart a delicious and quite unique flavour, although it is with tarragon as with celery-seed — a very little goes a long way. Shalots and leeks are always to be preferred to onions when they can be ob- tained ; they are more delicate in flavour. A ham bone is a perfect treasure for flavouring, but if we use it we must clarify the soup with a little lean meat or a tea- spoonful of white of egg. Mushroom ketchup and pre- pared sauces, too, are valuable helps for flavouring soups when used very sparingly, but a soup ought not to taste of mushroom ketchup above everything. There is still another way of making clear soup, and that is by boiling broth to a glaze, adding water, and simmering gently. I fear, however, that space will not allow me to describe this now, besides which it is a little difficult for amateurs. I must, therefore, advise girls to try the plans we have been speaking of. In our next lesson we will try to make thick soups and purdes. 71 xm. THICK SOUPS AND PUREES. '^HiCK. soup is stock made thick — that is, about as thick as cream— by the addition of some starchy ingredient, which can be boiled with the liquor, and, as it were, enter into its composition. The materials usually employed tor the purpose are flour, arrowroot, ground rice, com flour, oatmeal, potato flour, sago, tapioca, and eggs. The stock should first be pleasantly flavoured and seasoned, and made tree from fat, and the thickening ingredient should be added a little time before the soup is required, so that the “ liaison,” as it is called, or “thickening,” may have time to cook sufficiently, but not over much ; for it must be remembered that if the soup and thickening are boiled too long, the soup will become thicker and thicker, and may burn. When arrowroot, flour, or similar materials are em- ployed for thickening soups, the ingredient should first be measured (half an ounce of thickening to a pint of soup is a usual allowance), put into a basin mixed with a small quantity of cold liquid, stock or water, then beaten well with the back of a wooden spoon, till it forms a smooth thin paste. When this point is reached, add the hot stock gradually off the fire, to prevent lumping, put the soup back into the stewpan, stir it till it boils, simmer ior a few minutes, till the soup is smooth and thick, when it is ready to be served. Soup is very often thickened with brown roux — that is, a mixtqre of flour and butter browned over the fire. The advantage of using this preparation is that it colours the soup as well as thickens it. It is, however, liable to destroy the flavour of the soup, and there is really no occasion to use it, because soup can be coloured without it, by frying the meat and vegetables used in making it, particularly the onions, till they are brown without being at all burnt. A good cook is very careful about the appearance of her soup. If white, it should be white, not grey ; if brown, it should be brown, not drab. Brown soup which looks pale as if it were diseased will never be 72 The Girl’s Own Cookery Book. enjoyed thoroughly, no matter how good it may taste. When brown roux is used, the soup must be simmered by the side of the fire lor a while, and the fat must be skimmed off as it rises. A little caramel, ketchup, or a little strong brown gravy or Liebig’s extract may be added to the soup when it is about to be served if further colouring is required. Pastilles Carpentier also, which consist of small round balls like marbles, are to be bought at most grocers. They are specially made for colouring soup, are excellent for the purpose, and very cheap. All colouring ingredients, however, and especially caramel or ketchup, must be in- troduced very sparingly ; they must on no account be added in such quantities that they can be tasted. A soup that tastes of ketchup or burnt sugar is a failure, no matter how rich and brown it may look. Nevertheless it is a convenience to have materials of this kind at hand, because a small quantity will often impart the desired colour without exciting a suspicion of its cause. Caramel is easily made. Four ounces of moist sugar are put into an old saucepan and boiled until it is of a light brown colour. It is then stirred until it is very dark, without being burnt, when half a pint of boiling water is boiled with it for five minutes to dissolve it ; it may then be strained into a bottle, and put aside till wanted. Caramel thus prepared beforehand is very much to be prelerred to the rough-and-ready browning used by cooks every day, and made by burning sugar in an iron spoon. The latter preparation is almost certain to spoil the flavour of a dish into which it enters. The former, if used very carefully indeed, may improve the look of a soup without injuring its taste. Yet even this is a dangerous addition, and should be dispensed with if possible. Purdes differ from thick soups in that the vegetables used in flavouring the liquor, or the materials used for thickening, are rubbed patiently through a sieve ; then mixed with the liquor once more, and boiled up again before serving. In purdes nothing is wasted ; you get the full benefit of everything used in making the soup. Yet it is to be feared that purdes will never be very popular with people who have to do their own cooking, because this process of rubbing vegetables through a 73 Thick Soups and Purees. / sieve is rather troublesome, and calls both for time and patience. If these can be given, however, the result is sure to be satisfactory ; and if girls who have till now been accustomed only to the ordinary' method of cookery usually carried on in English kitchens will follow the directions given, and patiently make a puide properly, they wilt be astonished to find what excellent soup can be made for a trilling cost. The best of it is that a girl who gets the idea of making one pur^e can make every purde. Therefore, as potatoes ^re within the reach of all I will describe the process of making potato pur^e

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.