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Colonial America Cooking: Basics of Making Soup

© Pat Williams

Observations on Soups

When you make any kind of soup, particularly portable, vermicelli or brown gravy soup or any other that has herbs or roots in it, always observe to lay the meat in the bottom of your pan with a good lump of butter.

Cut the herbs and roots into small pieces and lay them over the meat; cover it close and set it over a very slow fire: it will draw all the virtue out of the roots and herbs, turn it to a good gravy and give the soup a very different flavor than if you first put it in water.

When your gravy is almost dried up, fill the pan with water; when it begins to boil, take off the fat and follow the directions of your recipe for whatever sort of soup you are making.

Based on recipe from Petersons - January, 1859

Making Soup Stock

The basis of all well-made soups is composed of what English cooks call stock or broth made from all sorts of meat, bones and the remains of poultry or game; all of which may be put together and stewed down in the stock-pot, the contents of which are by the French termed Consommé.

Then add a tablespoonful and a half of curry powder, and mix it up well. Now cut up the beef into pieces about an inch square; pour in from a quarter to a third of a pint of milk, and let it simmer for thirty minutes; then take it off and place it in a dish with a little lemon-juice.

While cooking, stir it constantly to prevent burning. Send it to the table with a wall of mashed potatoes or rice around it.

Based on recipe from Godeys - February, 1861

Gumbo Soup

• Cut up a chicken or any fowl as if to fry and break the bones
• Lay it in a pot with just enough butter to brown it a little
• When browned, pour as much water to it as will make soup for four or five persons
• Add a thin slice of lean bacon, an onion cut fine and some parsley
• Stew it gently five or six hours
• About twenty minutes before it is to be served, make a thickening by mixing a heaping tablespoonful of sassfra leaves, pounded fine, in some of the soup and adding it to the rest of the soup

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