HFF 5.1: Start Strong

The Challenge: Start Strong. Start the new season with something "strong"--strongly flavored, associated with strength, or even full of strong spirits.

The Recipe: Summer Soup from The Practical Cookbook:

Take a neck of mutton, joint it, break the bones, and put it into your soup-pot, adding four quarts of water to every five pounds of mutton. Put the pot on the fire, and let it boil slowly four or five hours; then strain off the liquid and return it to the soup-pot after carefully removing all the fat from the surface; then add to it three turnips pared and sliced thin, two young onions sliced, a half tea-spoonful of powdered sweet marjoram, a half tea-spoonful of tarragon, a table-spoonful of nasturtian [sic] seeds and a sufficient quantity of salt and pepper to season it well. Let the whole boil until the vegetables are pulp, then you may add, if you like, dumplings made of flour and butter. The soup is very good without the dumplings. 

I chose this one because all the main ingredients are mentioned in  Miss Beecher's remarks on "strong" flavors:

Thus with strong flavored meats like mutton, goose, and duck, it is customary to serve the strong flavored vegetables such as onions and turnips. Thus turnips are put in mutton broth and served with mutton, and onions are used to stuff geese and ducks. But onions are usually banished from the table and from cooking on account of the disagreeable flavor they impart to the atmosphere and breath.

--Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book (1856)

The Date/Year and Regon: Philadelphia, 1860

How Did You Make It: I scaled down to 1/2 lb of meat, and ended up using a bone-in lamb cutlet in place of the mutton neck. I broke the bones as best I could, and put it all  on the stove in 2 pints of water, and let it simmer for 5 hours. The stock then went in to the fridge overnight, which made it easier to skim off the (solidified) fat the next day. 

I then cut the two onions and five small turnips into small pieces, and added them to the mutton broth along with a half-teaspoon each of dried tarragon and fresh, crushed marjoram, and three nasturtium seeds. This simmered for another 5 hours, at which point the vegetable pieces were soft and small. I added a little salt and pepper, and served the soup without dumplings.

Garden produce

Time to Complete: ~10 minutes cutting ingredients and skimming fat, ~10 hours monitoring a simmering pan

Total Cost: $4.50 for meat. I conveniently had onions, turnips, nasturtium, and marjoram growing in the garden, and dried tarragon left over from a season 4 challenge. [Ok, I planted a garden of mostly-heritage vegetables for the purpose of cooking experiments.] 

How Successful Was It?: It tasted fine to me, and both of the guests finished their bowls (one taking seconds). I think it could have stood a pinch more salt, but the company did not all agree. The onion and tarragon flavors were discernable, but in general I think the flavors blended well together.

How Accurate Is It?: I used the wrong cut of meat, but that was a compromise to at least get the right species. After checking three stores in person and searching for local butchers online, it was the only cut of mutton or lamb I could find in a 20 mile radius. There must be meat suppliers with mutton in the area, but I've not found them yet. The water was a bit tricky, in that I should have used ~6 oz to keep it in proportion, but had to keep topping off the water as it boiled down (the lid on my soup pan got dented and over five hours the escaping moisture added up). I think it worked out, since the broth was not dilute and watery. My early nasturtiums are only just starting to come into seed, which is why I only used three; they are also very big seeds, so it seemed a close enough approximation. I increased the number of turnips since mine seemed small (and I didn't have anything else to do with them). 

I wasn't sure how literal "boil to a pulp" was meant to be taken. I don't think I could get it more pulpy without a food mill (like in the carrot soup), but since the only verb used was "boil", I erred on the side of not adding an extra step. I used the nasturtium seeds whole, but wonder if they were meant to be chopped. I suppose I also didn't scale down the vegetables to the quantity of broth, but it also never specifies that the 2 onions and three turnips were per 4 quarts of stock, just that 5 lbs of meat should be used for that much water. I think my proportions worked well, for what it's worth.

Summer Soup, 1860. In a modern tureen.