Chapter 1: Soups - Completed!

All 24 of the recipes within the Soup chapter are now complete and can join Stuffings in the done pile! I must say that many of them are but vague memories; most of them being cooked at the start of the project when I was a poor PhD student. All of the recipes are below in the order given in English Food with their score.

It was quite a mixed bag of recipes, though none were complete disasters or particularly horrible, with the lowest score being a quite good 4.5/10. Though I notice I have been rather generous in my scoring at the start! The average score for this chapter is a pretty decent 6.9, two whole points lower than the Stuffings section.

The first recipe I cooked for the blog: Finnan Haddock Soup

More importantly, there were some real stars that have become part of my regular repertoire, both at home and for the business, such as Green Pea Soup, June Pea Soup, Vegetable Soup, Cawl and Oyster (or Mussel) Soup.

So what have I learnt about English soups now that I have cooked so many? Well the main thing is that we love it – there are so many different kinds from simple hearty ones that are intended to be a complete meal such as Cawl or Mutton and Leek Broth to light and seasonal ones, delicious as a starter or light lunch like Tomato Soup and June Pea Soup. The final recipe to be cooked in the book – English Hare Soup – is just a single example of the very rich and darkly opulent soups you would have expected to be served in grander houses.

Tomato Soup

English soups are diverse and delicious, but one thing I do notice is that there are no complex soups that are loved, whose recipes are discussed and argued over between families and within households like the French Pot-au-Feu, Bouillabaisse and Cassoulet.

Soups and stews have evolved greatly from the few vegetables, herbs, cereals and scraps of meat and bone we simmered together in times past into an amazing array of delights, but the main thing I have learnt comes straight from those early pottage-makers – how to improvise with whatever you have to produce something nourishing and delicious.

#194 Almond Soup (White Soup) 9/10

#182 Apple Soup 5/10

#165 Indian Soup 6.5/10

#107 Chestnut and Apple Soup 6.5/10

#38 Broad Bean Soup 6.5/10

#69 Watercress Soup 5/10

#67 Green Pea Soup 8.5/10

#341 June Pea Soup 7/10

#60 Tomato Soup, Hot or Chilled 7/10

#68 Carrot and Tomato Soup 7/10

#187 Soyer’s Clear Vegetable Soup 5/10

#185 Vegetable  Soup 8/10

#7 Cauliflower and Fennel Soup 6/10

#16 Palestine Soup 8.75/10

#223 Marion Jones’s Green Fish Soup 5/10

#316 Oyster or Mussel Soup 9/10

#1 Smoked Finnan Haddock Soup 10/10

#193 Kidney Soup 6.5/10

#80 Oxtail Soup 7.5/10

#98 Cawl 7/10

#103 Mutton and Leek Broth 6.5/10

#106 Mulligatawny Soup 4.5/10

#327 Turkey and Hazelnut Soup 5.5/10

#410 English Hare Soup 9/10

#410 English Hare Soup

So here we are at the final recipe for the Soup chapter, ending on a blinder that couldn’t be more English, rich with claret and spiced with mace and Cayenne pepper.

I don’t really know why it took me so long to try this one; though rarely found in abundance, hare is not exactly difficult to find in season. Maybe I just kept missing the boat every year. The hare I used in this recipe I picked up from the excellent Northwest Game. So it’s not just the last soup recipe, but the last hare recipe too.

If you want to know more about hares have a look at this previous post.

This recipe comes from Antonin Carême, the legendary French chef, who worked himself from homeless child to probably the most influential cook ever. A genius patissier, he first attracted attention making elaborate edible sculptures to sit in the window of the patisserie. After some proper training he set down working on sauces, coming up with the classification of the four mother sauces, the base of all sauces in French cookery; a system still used to today. He spent quite some time working in Britain and was briefly chef to the Prince Regent. He’s appeared before on the blog, on recipe #317 Skuets, a dish comprised of sweetbreads, bacon and mushrooms cooked on a skewer, served with bread sauce.

To make the soup, heat 3 ounces of clarified butter in a flameproof casserole or large saucepan and fry until brown either a jointed young hare or the head and forequarters of an older, tougher hare. As it fries, toss in 4 ounces of diced unsmoked bacon or salt belly of pork. 

Once everything is a delicious brown, add a heaped tablespoon of plain flour, stir to cover the meat before add ½ bottle of red wine or claret and 1 ¾ pints of beef stock or consommé. On a medium heat, let the contents come to a bare simmer. As you wait for that to happen, pop in a large onion studded with a clove, a good pinch of Cayenne pepper, and ½ teaspoon each of ground mace and black pepper. Also toss in a decent bouquet garni, embellished with extra springs of parsley, rosemary and marjoram.

Simmer everything together very gently until the meat is tender and comes away from the bone easily. This can be anywhere between 1 ½ to 3 hours, depending on the vintage of the hare. Pass the soup through a strainer and fish out the joints, stripping the meat from the bone and cutting it into neat pieces. Salvage any pieces of the bacon and salt pork too. ‘Discard the remaining debris’, says Jane.

Return the strained soup to a cleaned pan, season with salt, and add 8 ounces of small mushrooms. Let them simmer for a few minutes before adding the hare meat and cured pork. If you like, add a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly.

#410 English Hare Soup. I think if I had cooked this soup at the beginning of this project, I wouldn’t have been able to take the gaminess of this dish. However, after eating my through several game recipes and species, I am a real convert to it and couldn’t recommend this soup highly enough (except perhaps to the uninitiated). It was beautifully rich – too rich as a starter – and I ate it over several days, where it became more and more delicious with every reheating. It’s a style of cooking game that has fallen out of favour recently, where game appears in more familiar settings such as burgers or warm salads. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, as it introduces a new generation of people to the wonders of game. Anyway, I digress. A great soup for a great evening in front of a roaring fire. 9/10.

#341 June Pea Soup

I haven’t been on the ball with my blogging recently, I do apologise (though there are reasons for this that you shall soon be privy to). I shall get my arse into gear.


Here’s a recipe that I have meant to make every summer, and every summer I have forgot. I did not expect to be making it here in America as you don’t see fresh peas in their pods very often here; I happened upon them at Soulard Market which is great for fruit and veg.

This soup is “a soup for midsummer when young peas are at their freshest and sweetest”, says Jane. In fact that is all the she says on this one. This soup has very few ingredients and it contains no stock – and no seasonings – and can be served either hot or cold. It’s not very often that you come across vegetable soups being made without stock, though the great French chef and restaurateur Marcel Boulestin knew all about the benefits of making soup in this way:

The chief thing to remember is that all soups – unless otherwise specified – must be made with plain water. When made with the addition of stock they lose all character and cease to be what they were intended to be. The fresh pleasant taste is lost owing to the addition of meat stock, and the value of soup from an economical point of view is also lost.

The French gastronome Brillat-Savarin made similar comments.

Marcel Boulestin

Well we get to put this theory to the test in this, the penultimate recipe in the Soups chapter…

Start by shelling your peas – you’ll need to buy three pounds – and stop shelling when you get to about 1 ¼ pounds. Reserve five or six of the greenest pods. Next, chop six ounces of spring onions and sweat them in three ounces of butter, along with a very finely chopped clove of garlic. Cover the pan, and let them stew for five minutes; mind you don’t let them brown though. Add your peas and the reserved pods along with a little less than three (UK) pints of water. Bring to a boil, and then simmer until the peas are nice and tender. Liquidise and sieve the soup, reheat and stir in 6 fluid ounces of crème fraîche or whipping cream. If you want to eat the soup cold, you are essentially done – all you need to do is chill it and add a flurry of chopped mint leaves into each bowl when you serve them. If you want it hot, stir in three more ounces of butter. Again, serve with some finely chopped mint leaves.

#341 June Pea Soup. Well, well, well, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised my this delicious soup – the sweet peas and the still very slightly acrid onions worked so well and did not require anything else to make them delicious, just the touch of aromatic mint and the silkiness from the cream. I tried it cold; there was none left to try warm! 7/10.

#333 Lamb's Head and Barley, with Brain Sauce

My-oh-my! Where do I start with this one!? It is quite possible the most infamous recipe in the whole book. I must say it didn’t seem as daunting as it did when I first spotted it after I had decided to cook the whole book.

Lamb’s head was once rather popular – in particular during the nineteenth century. According to Grigson, Queen Victoria’s chef was a fan. Why has it that in the last few decades it has just simply disappeared from our food culture? It did hang on in Northern England and Scotland and it was one of Jane Grigson’s favourite meals and she emphasises that it is not “ungenteel…or even savage food”.

Still Life with Sheep's Head

by Francisco de Goya (c.1808-12)

Mrs Beeton gives a recipe for leek soup that requires a sheep’s head and also describes how to “dress a sheep’s head” with a very similar recipe to Jane’s, though the barley is replaced with oats (as it is in the Scottish fashion). And if lamb’s head with brain sauce makes your stomach turn, I found a recipe in Elizabeth Raffald’s 1769 book The Experienced English Housekeeper for lamb’s head and purtenances, which, to you and I, are the innards. Calf’s head was also very popular; it was the main ingredient in mock turtle soup, for example. So the heads of sheep, calf and, of course, wild boar have been enjoyed for centuries in pretty well-to-do houses, so they can’t be that bad, can they..?

If you are thinking of cooking this receipt, first of all you need to find somewhere that’ll sell you a lamb’s head. I managed to get hold of one opportunistically at Global Foods in St Louis. There they were, just piled up in the freezer aisle. It is very important that you find an organic or halal butcher, then you can be sure that the animal was fed only what lambs should. The prion that causes scrapie is a concern with lamb that comes from the high-intensive farms, or at least it was. You also need to find some guests willing to eat it. Three brave souls - Anna, Vincent and Michelle - came to certainly the most unusual Sunday dinner I've ever had...

“Ask the butcher to clean and split the head…” starts Jane with this one. I wasn’t lucky enough to have a butcher on hand so I had to do this myself with a meat cleaver and a hammer. It took a fair few whacks and cracks before it split, but I got there in the end. I felt a little like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Carefully remove the brain and keep it one side, whilst you soak the head in salted water for an hour before rinsing it and placing it in a pot.

Pour enough water to cover and bring to the boil slowly, skimming any grey scum that rises as you go. Now add the following: a bouquet garni that includes a good sprig of winter savory (which was the most difficult ingredient to find!); an onion studded with 3 cloves; 2 carrots and a parsnip, both peeled and halved, a small peeled turnip, a trimmed and cleaned leek, 8 ounces of pearl barley and a good seasoning of salt and pepper – at least a tablespoon of salt is required I would say. Let the broth tick away slowly on a bare simmer for 1 ½ hours.

Whilst the broth bubbles, prepare the brain ready for the sauce. Begin by carefully removing the loose membranous net of blood vessels and placing the brain in salted water for 30 minutes. Remove it from its brine onto a square of muslin and tie it up. Place the brain in with the head and let it poach for 10 minutes. The brain will now be cooked and become firm, unwrap it and chop the brain.

It is quite homogenous with no gristly bits, so don’t worry. Now make a simple béchamel sauce by melting an ounce of butter in a saucepan. When it bubbles, stir in an ounce of flour and cook for two minutes before gradually whisking in ¼ pint of milk. Thin the sauce to an appropriate consistency with some lamb stock from the pot and let it simmer for at least 10 minutes, adding more stock if it gets too thick. Stir in the chopped brain and some parsley if you wish. Season and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

When the head is cooked, remove it from the pot and start having a good rummage around to find the meaty bits. I couldn’t find very much to be honest. There were two cheeks containing some good moist meat and the tongue of course. Apart from that, it was slim pickings. I thought perhaps there might be some edible palate as I knew ox palate was popular in the eighteenth century. The only other place I found some was at the base where head meets neck. Anyway, serve up what meat you can extract on a plate or bowl and surround with some of the barley along with some rolled grilled rashers of bacon and some lemon quarters and pour the sauce into a sauceboat.

The stock makes “a marvellous soup”. If you want to be in the true peasant style, serve it as the starter. Jane recommends saving it for another meal; “[l]amb soup, then lamb’s head, is too much of a good thing.” I have five tubs of it in my freezer…

#333 Lamb’s Head and Barley, with Brain Sauce. Making this is in no way as macabre as you might expect, except for the part with the cleaver and hammer that is. There was very little meat, but what there was tasted delicious and was very tender and the barley broth was hearty. The brain sauce was also good – the brain itself was tender with a certain firmness that was quite appealing and had a very mild kidney or liver flavour. I think it could have done with a touch of Cayenne pepper. So overall, not bad at all, though the amount of meat was disappointing. The soup left over is delicious but needs a touch of sugar, as lamb and mutton broths often do… 6.5/10.

#327 Turkey and Hazelnut Soup

There doesn’t seem to be any history to speak of with this recipe, it seems it is just a way to use up the turkey carcass after Christmas or Thanksgiving, perhaps conceived by Jane Grigson herself. In my case, it was a way of using the huge amount of turkey stock I had in the freezer from the boiled turkey recipe. We don't like waste here in Grigson Towers, so any way of putting any leftovers such as cooking liquors and carcasses are well-received.
It does use some nice wintertime ingredients: hazelnuts are usually in good supply along with the brazils, walnuts and almonds; there’s the fine herb chervil which I have tried and failed to grow myself. They’re a hardy plant and good for growing in autumn and winter. Unless it is me attempting cultivation. It is obviously in season now as I have seen them twice for sale over the last months or so.

This recipe gives calls for raw turkey breast, though some shredded left over leg meat from the roast would do perfectly as a substitute. Likewise, if hazelnuts are not to hand you can use chopped toasted almonds or chestnuts.

This recipe is for 4 to 6 people.

Bring 1 ½ pints of turkey stock to a boil with 8 ounces of raw minced turkey breast. Let it simmer for 3 or 4 minutes. Liquidise the soup and pass it through a sieve back into the pan after you have rinsed it. Jane does not mention what to do with all that turkey breast that won’t pass through the sieve – and there was plenty of it. It seemed a waste so I put some back in as it was still nice and tender.

Take a large egg yolk and 4 ounces of cream (weight, not volume) and whisk them together before adding a ladleful of hot soup to it. Pour in the stock mixture into the pan and stir over a medium heat until the soup thickens. Don’t let the soup boil, unless you want scrambled egg in it. Take the soup off the heat and add some chopped, fresh chervil (dried is allowed if you can’t get fresh), ½ a teaspoon of paprika, 3 ounces of chopped grilled or roasted hazelnuts and 2 ounces of butter. Lastly, season with salt and black pepper.

#327 Turkey and Hazelnut Soup. This soup was okay; inoffensive and homely, but rather bland. I imagine that I would like it if I were convalescing after a bout of the ‘flu. Not a bad soup, but certainly not an amazing one either. Next time I have some turkey stock, I shall make a risotto. 5.5/10

#316 Oyster or Mussel Soup

There is no introduction to this recipe by Grigson in English Food. I am never sure whether Jane did this because she didn’t want to, or whether she thought she didn’t need to. It turns out the recipe goes back quite a bit with a huge amount of similar recipes cropping up during the nineteenth century, including examples from stalwarts such as Eliza Acton (1845), Alexis Soyer (1850) and Elizabeth Raffald (1769). Recipes also crop up in their droves in American cook books of the nineteenth century.

Oysters were hugely popular in British cuisine up until the early nineteenth century, and were at one point considered poor-man’s food, until the seas of Britain became polluted from the Industrial Revolution. These days, they are rather more expensive, though dropping in price now that our seas are much cleaner than they used to be. Farming helps keep the price of the oyster down and there are several successful farms around the UK now. The oyster farm is by no means a recent invention – the Gauls in the 7^th century BC farmed them and sold them as far afield as Rome. It went a bit tits-up however when they were completely trounced by the Barbarians.

I chose to use oysters here, but you can use mussels for this recipe instead. There are several pluses to using them: if you are on a budget, they are good and cheap; and also it is easy to get the meat from them. If I were in England, I would probably go for mussels simply for the reason that shucking oysters is one major pain in the arse. However, here in America where seafood is very popular and you can walk into your local supermarket and buy pre-shucked fresh oysters in their own liquor from the fish section. Now that I know this, expect to see a lot more recipes that use oysters in the blog. Mussel farming, like oyster farming, is a main contributor to the reason they are cheap; they can be grown quickly and in great numbers on ‘parks’ made by hanging ropes down into the sea.

Eating seafood such as like oysters and mussels before starting this project would have filled me with dread – our family never ate things like this – but now they fill me with joy. I just love the little beasties.

This recipe is for 6 people (or 4 greedy ones).

Start off with your appropriate seafood: according to the book you’ll need either 2 dozen oysters or 2 pounds of mussels. The number of oysters you need will actually depend on the species of oyster available – 2 dozen if native oysters, or one dozen if the large Pacific or Atlantic species. Shuck the oysters, or alternatively leave them flat-side up in the freezer for a while until they open up for you. Either way, make sure you keep any oyster liquor. If you are using one of the large species, cut each one into two or three pieces.

If the mussel is your bivalve of choice, then give them a good scrub and pull out their beards should they have any. Tap each one: if the shells close, your mussel be alive and well, if it remains open, your mussel be dead, so discard it. Chuck them in a large pan, cover, and place over a high heat. After a few minutes, give them a shake and see if the mussels have opened. If they have they are cooked. Remove the meat from them and place them in sieve over a bowl to collect the juices. Don’t forget to keep any juices from the bottom of the cooking pan too.

Now the shellfish is prepared, you can get on with making the soup. Finely chop 4 shallots and soften them in 2 ounces of butter. Once golden, stir in two tablespoons of flour and let it cook for a minute or two. Find yourself a whisk and mix in the reserved juices and then 1 ¼ pints of light beef stock or veal stock. Season with sea salt, black pepper, Cayenne pepper and nutmeg. Cover, and simmer for 20 minutes or so. When you are ready to serve, add the oysters or mussels plus ¼ pint of double cream and some chopped parsley. Bring it up to a boil, turn off the heat and add a squeeze of lemon juice. Serve immediately.

#316 Oyster or Mussel Soup. This was a fantastic soup! The combination of rich creamy stock and fresh iodine-scented oysters was magic. One of the best soups I’ve done – and really easy too. If you’re doing a dinner party and you want to impress without breaking your back, I would definitely have a go at this. I shall try it again soon but with mussels and see if they are as good as the oysters. 9/10.

#223 Marion Jones's Green Fish Soup

Here’s a relatively straight-forward recipe – there’s not many left to attempt that are quick and easy, everything else is either bizarre, labour-intensive or both. Not be put off by the name – there are no green fish in it – it is just white fish, the green colour coming from broccoli. FYI: Marion Jones does/did co-own a restaurant in Malvern; I know nothing else about her. She must’ve been a mate of Jane’s.

Begin by sweating a sliced medium onion and a small sliced leek in an ounce of butter. Be careful not to let it colour. When soft, add an ounce of flour and stir for a few minutes so that the flour cooks out a little. Pour in 1 ¾ of fish stock that has been flavoured with nutmeg and fennel (crush a few fennel seeds up and grate some nutmeg in, if using fish stock cubes) and simmer for 10 minutes, then add a pound of skinned white fish fillets – cod, haddock, whiting, hake, etc. – and simmer for a further minute. Allow to cool a little before blending it. While the stock cooks, trim 13 ounces of broccoli – you can use sprouting broccoli or the more readily available calabrese broccoli – and boil in salted water until just tender. As soon as they are cooked, drain them and refresh them in cold water to give them a vivid green colour. Make sure you reserve the cooking water. Add the cooked broccoli and blend again, thinning the soup with the reserved cooking liquor. If you want to be posh, pass it through a sieve. Season with salt and pepper, and stir through some cream if you like.

#223 Marion Jones’s Green Fish Soup. This was an okay recipe, but nothing to shout about. It tasted a bit like those Findus boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce from 1970s and 80s. Remember them? The white fish and broccoli combination work well as they have a certain complementary sweetness. I wouldn’t make it again, but I would eat it if someone else cooked it for me 5/10.

#194 Almond Soup (White Soup)

Yes, another soup...

This recipe is the very first one that appears in English Food. Although it may seem rather odd nowadays, it is one of the most historical recipes there is. Almond soup, or almond milk as it was originally called goes right back to the Middle Ages. It was made with almonds, onions, wine and spices. More recently, it diverged into two completely separate dishes: almond soup and blancmange.

Griggers reckons that one of the reasons (apart from it tasting good) that it’s remained popular is because the ingredients are easy to come by; most being found about the house. Well, it is popular no longer – I’d heard of it, but only vaguely. Not all the ingredients are easy to come by these days either – the main reason I’ve only got round to making this now is that I managed to finally get hold of the veal knuckle required for the stock.

I always really enjoy making these sorts of recipes in the book – I don’t even mind if they’re not that nice – it’s just interesting cooking and tasting these old, old recipes. I’ve said it before, but it is great that such books like English Food exist, it’s also great to see that many of these unfashionably historical recipes are tasty and interesting. Does this one fit into that category though..?

To make the soup, you need to start the day before and get on with the task of stock-making. Start off by placing a small gammon hock (I made one myself in the brine tub!) and a good meaty veal knuckle that has been cut into three pieces in a large pan or stockpot. Add four pints of cold water and slowly bring to the boil; the slower you do this, the clearer the stock will be. When it does come to the boil, skim away any scum and add a quartered onion, a quartered carrot, four chopped celery sticks, a teaspoon of lightly-crushed peppercorns, two blades of mace, a bay leaf and a tablespoon – no, I didn’t misread the book, tablespoon – of salt. Bring back to the boil and then turn the heat right down so that the stock simmers gently away for four hours. Strain and chill overnight and skim the fat off the top. Bring back to the boil and reduce the stock until there is around 2 ½ pints remaining. Alternatively, if you simply cannot be arsed with all of that, use a light beef stock!

For the soup, place 2 ounces of blanched almonds and an ounce of white bread (crusts removed) into a blender along with a couple of ladlefuls of stock and liquidise the lot. Push the gloop through a sieve into the reduced stock. Turn the heat off under the pan. Next, beat an egg yolk into ¼ each of double cream and soured cream and whisk it into the soup, reheat, making sure the stock is not boiling, to prevent the egg from cooking and curdling. Now season with white pepper, salt (!), Cayenne pepper and lemon juice. Serve with fried croutons or fried almonds.

#194 Almond Soup (White Soup). Certainly not one for those on a low salt or low fat diet. It was very salty and rich. I assume that the tablespoon of salt listed in the ingredients is a typo since a ham hock is also used for the stock. I’m not convinced that I actually liked this soup, it was certainly nicer the next day when the flavours had time to develop. It’s certainly a posh soup, but I think it could’ve been improved by using a less salty stock. Perhaps after all this time-biding, it would have been better if I’d simply used a light beef stock as suggested in the recipe. 4.5/10.

#193 Kidney Soup

Kidney Soup was apparently a kitchen standby in households of times past – particularly in Scotland. Indeed, this recipe is taken from Florence B. Jack’s book Cookery for Every Household. Ms Jack was the principal of the Edinburgh School of Domestic Arts, and very austere she was too.

Now I know it sounds weird, but this is a classic recipe that is also cheap – cheap because it’s main ingredient is kidney, of course. We are being told that offal and the cheaper cuts of meats are suddenly becoming popular due to the recession, but I have not seen any evidence of really from the people that I speak to (though I have in butcher's shop windows). When saying I’ve been doing this recipe, there has been nothing but pulled faces and dry retching (the only exception being Anthea – frequent blog commenter – she ate it often as a child). I must admit, however, that as much as I love kidneys, I wasn’t quite sure about eating them in soup. However, this book is full of surprises.

To start with you need a whole ox kidney; cut away any fat and gristly bits and cut up the kidney into small pieces. Brown it in an ounce and a half of butter or dripping in a large saucepan along with a sliced onion. Pour over four pints of beef stock and stir, adding some salt. Bring the stock to a boil and skim any scum that rises to the top. Add a bouquet garni and some spices: 20 peppercorns, a blade of mace and a quarter teaspoon of celery seeds. Tie the bouquet and spices in a piece of muslin first. Simmer for 3 to 4 hours, covered on the hob or in the oven.

When ready, skim any fat from the surface and strain the soup. As with most soups and stews its best let it cool down completely – overnight is best – so that you be sure of getting rid of all the fat. Pick out the bits of kidney and give them a rinse. Heat up the soup again and add an ounce of flour that has first been slaked in a tablespoon of mushroom ketchup. (The recipe doesn’t actually say what kind of ketchup, but with this being beef, mushroom or tomato are the best to use.) let the soup thicken slightly and add the kidney pieces. Finally season with more salt and pepper if required, plus some lemon or orange juice and a dash of sherry to add complexity of the flavour.

FYI: the kidneys were thought to be the part of the body concerned with conscience and reflection. Apparently, God would inspect the kidneys to see how good someone had been. In fact, one kidney was responsible for good thoughts, the other evil. The Latin word renes, is used to describe anything of the kidney (e.g. renal), but also is the root word for reins too. So there you go; a choice nugget of factoid for you there.


#193 Kidney Soup. This was a really delicious soup! I loved it the slightly spiced beef consommé was light and tasty and complimented the strong metallic gamey taste of the kidneys. It requires a bit for forethought to make it, but it is worth it I reckon. Cheap, tasty and good for you. 6.5/10.

#187 Soyer's Clear Vegetable Soup

I am still trying to count the pennies at the minute and this recipe was designed to be cheap to make as it is from Alexis Soyer’s book Shilling Cookery for the People (1845). I’ve mentioned Soyer before in the blog – he was a French chef who wanted to help the people and the book was one way. He was also a pioneer – he helped develop cooking on gas and ovens with adjustable temperatures. Anyway, I did baulk at this recipe: shilling cookery with veal in it!? However, I was wrong; I managed to get hold of a veal knuckle to make the soup for just 25 pence from the Orton Farmers' Market. Bargain. You may have some reservations about eating veal, but these days you really don’t need to – I’ll discuss that in a later entry though.



I love how the book has two vegetable soup recipes and neither even entertain being vegetarian! Brilliant. We love Griggers!

To make this soup you need to begin by making a veal stock: You need to get hold of 2 pounds of veal knuckle – it seems that they are quite easy to get hold of as long as your butcher sells veal in the first place. Ask the butcher to chop it into small pieces – I couldn’t as I was at the market and had to do it myself which was a nightmare to do. Place the knuckle pieces in a large pan along with 2 ounces of butter; 2 ounces of chopped, lean unsmoked bacon; 3 teaspoons of salt; ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper; 6 ounces of sliced onion; and ¼ pint of water. Bring the water to a boil and stir the ingredients for around 10 minutes. An opaque whitish stock is created. Now add a further 4 ½ pints of water and bring to a boil, then skim, then simmer for 45 minutes. Strain the stock when cooked. You can do all this in advance, of course.

For the soup itself you need to dice some vegetables: around 8 ounces of turnip, Jerusalem artichokes or carrot, or a mixture; plus 3 ounces of mixed onion, leek and celery. Melt 2 ounces of butter or dripping in a pan and add the diced vegetables along with 2 teaspoons of sugar. Stir them until they caramelise and, when ready, add 3 pints of the stock. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Lastly, stir through 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley or chives, or both. Serve with brown bread and butter.


#187 Soyer’s Clear Vegetable Soup. This was an unusual soup; I can’t decide if I liked it or not. I was a very thin soup that wasn’t hearty at all, so it didn’t fill any gap in my stomach! It was saved by the sweet vegetables and their caramelised coating that darkened the soup and made look quite attractive. Not sure if I’d make it again though - 5/10.

#186 Cheese and Oat Biscuits

To go with the vegetable soup I made yesterday, Old Griggers recommends these cheese and oat biscuits to help pad it out into a main meal. Indeed, they go well with most soups, she says. She also says that they are good piled high with cream cheese, finely chopped onion and Cayenne pepper. I’ve never made my own savoury biscuits, so I was interested in seeing how these turned out. They are also cheap to make; a prerequisite these days.


Mix together 3 ounces of rolled oats with 5 ounces of plain flour and rub in 3 ½ ounces of salted butter. Next stir in 4 ounces of grated cheese – a mixture of grated strong Cheddar and Parmesan (I did a ratio of about 3:1) and form it into a dough with two egg yolks. Use a little cold water to bring it together if need be. Season the dough well with salt and pepper. Now roll out thinly and cut our rounds with a scone cutter, place them on a greased baking tray and bake at 200⁰C for around 10 minutes until golden. Cool on a wire rack.

#186 Cheese and Oat Biscuits. I was really impressed by these. So impressed, in fact, that I managed to scoff them all over the course of the evening. Both the use of strong cheeses and a good seasoning is very important, and that is what makes them so much better than any cheese biscuit you could buy. The fact that they’re a piece of piss to make is an added bonus! 8/10.

#185 Vegetable Soup

In case you didn’t know, ‘Thrifty’ is my middle name. Well ‘Skint’ is, at any rate and I’m ploughing through the cheaper of the recipes. This is not necessarily a difficult, but they also have to be healthy too as I’ve developed a bit of a man gut and my moobs are beginning to bud. This is not good.

Obviously the soups are a good target and this vegetable soup seems perfect. I have my own recipe for vegetable soup that I’ve put on the blog before and I think it’s pretty good, she has some interesting additions such as dill and allspice berries. Let’s see if Griggers does a better one…

An important point that Griggers makes is that you don’ have to stick to any particular strict rules with this kind of soup – any vegetables will do I think. Also, this recipe for vegetable soup is not vegetarian, but it could easily be adapted by omitting the meat and using vegetable stock.

Begin by simmering a pound of sliced cabbage in 2 ½ pints of water or light stock along with 12 lightly crushed peppercorns, 6 crushed allspice berries and ½ pound of salt pork, smoked bacon joint or ham hock for 30 minutes. I would use just water if your using a hock with bone, stock otherwise. Now add 2 coarsely chopped carrots, 4 potatoes that have been peeled and cubed, 2 sliced leeks (or one leek and one onion) and a few lovage leaves (these are optional). Simmer for a further 30 minutes. Remove the meat and use it for another meal, or, as I did, chop it up and return it to the soup at the end. The soup needs to be blended now – don’t go mad with it, either pulse and partially liquidise it, or use a mouli-legumes. Found that one of those hand blenders is the best thing for this job. Finally, add one to two tablespoons of grated Parmesan, some dill (optional), cream (also optional) and season with salt, pepper and sugar. Griggers suggests eating the soup with fingers of cheese on toast or cheese and oat biscuits. I went with the latter (cheap and easy to make!).

#185 Vegetable Soup. I can’t believe I’ve not made this recipe yet! Well I have to say it beats my vegetable soup hands down. The soup is very hearty and the addition of the salty piquant cheese and the lemon-fresh dillweed really transform it into a pretty macho vegetable soup. 8/10.

#182 Apple Soup

I wanted to hit the ground running with the Griggers project this September after being away in Turin (work, not play) for the latter part of August, but alas, I have been hindered. There are two main problems here: I am skint and I have become a right old fat knacker all of a sudden. These factors combined can be a hindrance with the recipes in English Food. However, Charmolian and I are being rather more mindful of budgets by planning stuff out properly and sharing cooking duties. To begin with, I tried this soup – cheap and easy, but an unusual one. It is apparently, a very old recipe going right back to the fifteenth century. It is very cheap to make and therefore I assume it was a peasant dish: (windfall) apples and beef broth, basically.

So thrifty folks, here’s how to make your own taste of Medieval England:

Start off by simmering some pearl barley and/or rice in some beef stock until cooked. Next bring 2 ½ pints of beef stock in a saucepan. Meanwhile, roughly chop roughly around 12 ounces of either cooking apples or Cox’s apples ; no need to peel or core. Add the apples to the beef stock and simmer until soft. Strain and push the apples through the sieve, and then add half a teaspoon of ground ginger and a quarter teaspoon of ground black pepper before stirring in the rice or barley. Serve very hot.


#182 Apple Soup. A strange one, this one. It’s not the most exciting – it is what it is, apples and beef, and I’m hardly about to do cartwheels over it, but I did grow to enjoy it after a few spoonfuls. The texture was quite appealing, the high pectin content of the apples makes it slightly viscous and gloopy, and combined with the thickening barley and rice made it seem more substantial than it was, which is good as it’s almost totally calorie-free. Would I make it again? Only when I’m very poor. It’s interesting to eat some food that has some history though. 5/10.

#165 Indian Soup

A soup “with a lively freshness and a spicy flavour” says Jane, just the ticket for a summer soup, it is also a thrifty soup as it requires left-over boiled rice and left over chicken bones and meat, of which I had both from the chicken curry I had made the previous night. It is basically an Indian-style version of chicken noodle soup and is, of course, about as Indian as Prince Phillip, but this is the 1970s so we shall allow it. Anyway, who cares as long as it tastes nice; and I had high hopes for it after the disappointing mulligatawny soup I had cooked previously.

To start, bring 3 pints of beef stock, 2 large sliced onions, a large Bramley apple, a tablespoon of desiccated coconut, 2 teaspoons of curry powder and the bones from a chicken or game carcass (minus meat scraps) to the boil and simmer for an hour. There is no need to peel or core the apple, because the stock is then strained through muslin into another pan. The resulting cloudy stock now needs to be made clear – this is a two-stage process. First, use kitchen paper to blot off any fat that may have risen to the top; secondly, put over a moderate heat and whisk in two egg whites. Keep whisking for a few minutes and then leave to simmer for five more without stirring. The idea here is that as the egg whites cook they mop up any solids that make the soup cloudy. When ready, strain again; the result should be a lovely golden-brown and clear broth. Season it well with salt and both black and Cayenne peppers, plus a squeeze of lemon juice. Finally, add a few tablespoons of boiled basmati rice and the shredded scraps of meat.


#165 Indian Soup. Well, Griggers was right – it is a delicious soup, clear, spicy and fruity with a lovely tart finish supplied by the lemon and Bramley apple. It would make a perfect starter to a meal – not too filling and interesting in its flavours. However, it is a bit of a faff – it’s not something that can be thrown together and liquidised at the end of cooking, and although tasty, I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort (making a clear consommé is a tricky business). After weighting up the pros and cons, I’ll give it 6.5/10.

FYI: a simpler way to clarify a stock is to freeze it and to let it strain through muslin slowly overnight in the fridge. Obviously you need to remember to make the stock a couple of days before you want to use it, but it’s very easy indeed! It also gives a more clear stock too in my experience.

#151 To Cook Salt Pork or Hams: Part 1 - To Eat Hot

After a 5 day wait, the pork I had put in the brine tub was ready for cooking. Jane outlines three different ways to cook your salt pork or ham if you want to serve it hot, but they all start with the same process: simmering in water with stock vegetables.


The first thing to do is to rinse your joint and weight it on some scales. Place the joint in a heavy casserole or stockpot, cover it with cool water and let it come to a boil slowly. Let it simmer for 5 minutes and taste the water – if it’s too salty throw the water away and start again (though it was fine when I tasted mine). For hams up to 4 pounds (2 kilos), cook for 30 minutes to the pound (1 hour to the kilo) plus an extra 30 minutes. However, this can be reduced if the joint is slim. To improve the flavour of the ham, add some stock vegetables: carrot, onion, leek, turnip, that kind of thing. They also flavour the stock with which delicious soups can be made – like this one.

It now depends on how you want to serve your ham:
1. Simply boiled – easy-peasy! Serve it with whatever vegetables or salad you like.



2. Encased in pastry – yes, you heard correctly! Remove before the final hour; encase it in thick pastry, glaze with egg and bake in a moderate-hot oven for an hour.

3. Glaze it. This the one I went for. Remove the ham half an hour before the end of cooking and remove the skin. Criss-cross the fat with a sharp knife and stud the crosses with cloves. Then make a glaze:

Sorry about the shit picture - I'm sure I took a better one than this!

Mix together a tablespoon of French mustard, one of double cream and one of either brown sugar, marmalade or apricot jam (or anything else sweet you like), next mix in a teaspoon of ground cinnamon or cloves. Spread this mixture all over the fat. Place in a roasting tin, add a ladleful of the stock to the bottom to stop any glaze from catching if it falls, and bake for 30 minutes at 190°C. When done, remove and let it rest before carving.

To accompany it, make a sauce with the pan juices by boiling them up with some cream, white wine or fortified wine, depending on the glaze you used. I went for cream as I used dark brown sugar.

Serve with seasonal vegetables and glazed onions, Grigson says. However, she also says that glazed turnips go well too. So I made those, plus boiled potatoes and peas.

#151 – To Cook Salt Pork and Hams: Part 1 – To Eat Hot: 7/10. I really enjoyed this – the ham cure was beautifully seasoned and salty and the spiced sticky sugar glaze complimented it perfectly. It was a little dry though, but I have a feeling that I cooked a little too long in the stock though as it was a slim piece of meat. That said, it was still delicious and we all polished it off quick-smart. I think that with a bit of practise at this kind of thing, the scores will quickly creep up to the high 8s, 9s or 10s!

Everything you wanted to know about bouquet garnis but were afraid to ask...

Ok, you weren't afraid to ask...

Not really had time to add extra entries other than the stuff I’m cooking from the Tome. However, I did come across this information in the very excellent book A Celebration of Soup by Lindsey Bareham on the subject of bouquet garnis – I usually guess as to what should go in mine, and try and match it to the ingredients of the soup/stew etc, but Lindsey gives an ultimate list here, which I’m reproducing – I’m using it as a benchmark from now on and thought you might like to know too… So whenever I mention that I’ve used a bouquet garni, unless Griggers is very specific as to what should go in it, it’ll be one of these and I’ll link back to this post. Hope it’s useful!

Poultry – stick of celery cut in half, parsley stalks, a couple of sprays of tarragon, a bayleaf, a sprig of thyme and leek trimmings.

Game – A sprig of rosemary, ½ an onion, 3 inches of pared orange peel and a sprig of thyme.

Fish – A couple of fennel stalks or leaves, a sprig each of chervil and tarragon and leek trimmings.

Meat – One clove of unpeeled garlic, parsley stalks, a bayleaf, ½ an onion studded with a few cloves and a sprig of time. (I’m also adding a spring of sage with pork and rosemary with lamb).

Pheasant and Celery Broth

There was no way I was throwing out the carcasses of the roast pheasants, so I did my research and came up with this soup which used up all the celery trimmings and unused potatoes from the game chips too. I also found pigeon carcasses in the freezer, so I added them in. The idea here is that you can use any poultry or game bird carcasses as long as you’ve got enough of them. The point is to use whatever left over vegetables you’ve got, so I’ve not given amounts – I even chucked in the leftover cooked peas and beans that hadn’t been eaten right at the end.

You will need…
Carcasses of 2 pheasant, cut up (or 1 chicken, turkey or several smaller game birds, etc, etc)
4 pints of water
Bouquet garni
5 peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
Stock vegetables/trimmings – i.e. celery, onion, leek etc. all roughly chopped
1 pint of light beef stock
4 ounces of pearl barley
Sliced/cubed broth vegetables – potatoes, carrots, etc
4 or 5 sticks of celery, sliced or cubed

What to do…
Place the carcasses into a large saucepan or stockpot with the water, the bouquet garni, the peppercorns, salt and the stock vegetables. Bring to the boil, cover tightly and simmer for 2 to 2 ½ hours. Strain the stock and return it to the pan and add the barley, beef stock, celery and the other stock vegetables and simmer for a further hour. Whilst you are waiting, pick any meat from the carcasses and put them in with broth at the end. Check the seasoning. Serve with buttered brown bread.

#107 Chestnut and Apple Soup

I’m a chestnut fan, but I’ve not ever cooked with them, except for roasting. In fact I’ve only ever eaten them roasted or in a pork stuffing. I spotted some in the greengrocers and thought I’d have a go at this soup. The soups in English Food have been great (with the exception of the Mulligatawny Soup); and what I really like about them all so far is the simplicity – absolutely no faffing about. This one is no different. Give it a go if you see some chestnuts.

This makes enough for 6:

This soup requires a pound of chestnuts, and the first job is to pierce either end of each and every one with a sharp knife. Plunge them into boiling water for 10 minutes. Use a tea towel to grasp onto them with one hand and a sharp knife to remove their softened shells with the other and discard any bad ones; don’t worry if they are not whole. Keep them in the hot water as you peel them to keep the shells soft. Simmer the chestnuts along with one stick of celery in 3 ½ pints of light beef stock for 20 minutes. In the mean time, peel, core and slice two Cox’s Pippin apples. Simmer the apples in 2 ounces of butter until they soften, seasoning well with black pepper. Add the apple and juices to the stock and liquidise the whole thing until smooth. Return it to the pan, check for seasoning, and stir through 4 fluid ounces of single cream. Don’t let the soup boil if you are retuning it to the heat. Serve the soup with croutons fried in butter.

FYI: if you are lucky enough to know where there is a sweet chestnut tree, you can make shampoo from cooking up the leaves and peel.

#107 Chestnut and Apple Soup – 6.5/10. A very nice creamy-pale soup. Rich, yet light at the same time. I would certainly recommend this one; it would make a very good first course. Two apples didn’t really make it taste that much of apples, so it loses some marks for that – I would do three.

#106 Mulligatawny Soup

Whilst perusing the little fishmongers in Stockport, me and Charlotte spotted boiling chickens for sale. This is quite weird as I always keep my eye out for them and never see them, but the day before Charlotte requested Mulligatawny soup, but I said that we couldn’t do that, as we need a boiling fowl for it. Perhaps Charlotte is a lucky charm for the English Food project and me. Like some sort of leprechaun or troll.* I’m glad I now have a supply of boiling fowls as quite a few recipes require them. Good oh.

FYI: the word Mulligatawny comes from the Tamil, an Indian language, and means pepper water, and it came here in the Eighteenth Century.

This makes a big old load of soup, enough for 5 or 6 people:

Begin by chopping the boiling chicken into pieces and brown it in 2 ounces of butter, along with a sliced onion. Now add 1 ½ tablespoons of curry powder – either mild, medium or hot (I went for medium, but added a pinch of chilli powder) – and 8 ounces of yoghurt, plus some salt. Fry all this until the yoghurt reduces and becomes a thick crust on the bottom the pan. Be careful not to let it burn though. Add 3 pints of water and let it all come to a simmer. Cook for around an hour and a half until the meat is falling off the bone. Pick the meat off the carcass and chop it up, if need be, retuning it to the pan and chucking out the bones. This is a good point to leave the soup overnight, so any chicken fat can be skimmed off easily. Melt another of butter in a separate small saucepan and add 4 cloves; apparently, the cloves soften after a few minutes if cooked gently and can be crushed with a spoon. This didn’t happen for me. Hey-ho. Add the juice of lemon and pour the butter mixture into the soup. Season with more salt if appropriate. Serve with some boiled rice and some chopped apple sprinkled on top.


#106 Mulligatawny Soup – 4.5/10. Not a bad soup, but decidedly average. When I first tried I thought it was surprisingly light and refreshing, but then as I tried it again, I decided I wasn’t sure. It sat in the fridge for a bit and I realised I wasn’t going to eat it, so it went off the bin. I think I was disappointed because it wasn’t what I expected. I’ve had Mulligatawny from a tin and was sure it contained some kind of red meat. Flicking through the book, I spotted another soup called Indian Soup, which looks a lot like what I thought Mulligatawny was.

*Joke

#103 Mutton and Leek Broth

After the success of the Welsh Cawl last month and since it’s been fookin’ freezing of late I thought I’d try something similar - Mutton and Leek Broth. All very much in the same vein. I’ve never cooked mutton before and only eaten once or twice. Plus Grigson says it is “magnificent”. The recipe calls for scrag end of neck, which I managed to get hold of from Frost’s in Chorlton (what would I do without them?); as it’s a cheap cut this soup is really good for those on a budget: 1 ½ pounds for four quid. If you can’t get mutton, you can use lamb. Ask your butcher to chop it up for you as it’s a bit of a hack-saw job.

FYI 1: the neck of a lamb/sheep/veal calf is split into three sections: scrag end nearest the head, which is mainly bone. This is a good thing for broths as it imparts flavour to make a delicious stock. Apparently scrag end is an old fashioned term, and we say ‘round end of neck, presumably because scrag end doesn’t sound too appetising. There’s mid-neck or middle neck and best end of neck too – I’m sure I will get to them in some other recipe.

FYI 2: mutton applies to sheep that have more than two permanent incisors in wear, usually over ayear old.

For 6-8:

Like many soups and stews that involve cooking joints and bones up, it’s best to cook it the day before, also the pearl barley requires soaking time so keep this all in mind.

Start by rinsing and soaking 4 ounces of pearl barley in water for four hours. Do some light housework in the meantime, or maybe just watch a film in between. Drain the barley and put it in a large saucepan or stockpot. Trim off any excess fat from the meat (keep any big chunks and freeze them and use for Singin’ Hinnies, which I’ll be cooking very soon) and add the chunks to the pot along with 4 pints of water. Bring it to the boil and simmer it gently for an hour before adding the vegetables: 5 ounces of diced carrot, 4 of diced turnip, a stalk of chopped celery, a chopped leek and 5 ounces of chopped onion. Season with salt and pepper at this point too. Let the broth simmer for at least another hour until the meat is falling off the bones. Cut the meat up and return it to the pot and discard the bones. Skim any fat from the soup – this is the point to leave it over night; solidified fat is much easier to remove. Bring back to the boil and correct the seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar and cayenne pepper. Be quite liberal with the sugar and salt. Slice a second leek thinly and add to the broth along with some chopped parsley and turn off the heat; the residual heat will cook the leek. Serve with granary bread and butter.

#103 Mutton and Leek Broth – 6.5/10. A nice soup that needed a lot of seasoning to make it delicious. I really liked the mild mutton flavour and the pearl barley, but expected it to be much more flavourful. That said, because the batch I made was so big I was still eating it three days later and it did get better as time went by.