More explorations
I would give you many soup recipes today, but there is only one written in the ‘Soup’ section of this home collection.
Pumpkin Soup
2 lbs pumpkin
1 pt milk
onion juice or chopped onion to taste
celery to taste (2-3 sticks)
2 tbs butter
pepper, salt, cayenne
Dice pumpkin, celery and onion. Chop fine and put in saucepan and just cover with water. Cook quickly for about 20 minutes. Put milk and butter, salt etc into another saucepan and heat. When veg are cooked, take off an serve into milk. Makes a lovely cream of soup. Do not boil after adding veggies to milk.
What I like about this recipe it’s that it’s not from a book. Quite obviously the writer has taken a bookish method and tried to be clear about ingredients and technique, but their own style and language is very clear. It’s like someone standing at my elbow, telling me what to do.
There are three recipes written on an old bit of blue letterpaper (that lovely almost-transparent variety that you just don’t see round much anymore) and these recipes have been taken from a cookbook. Caramel tart and Pineapple sweet and Philadelphia Cheese Tart. Again, very Australian recipes – Carnation milk and Philadelphia cream cheese and Nestlé’s Condensed Milk are all ingredients that I learned to cook with when young. We always specified the brand because they were quite different products. For baked cheese cakes I preferred Gippsland over Philadelphia and for refrigerator cheese cakes, Philly was much better.
Then there’s an insert on an old, browning envelope that’s been too close to heat at some stage. There’s a recipe for Butterscotch Icecream on it and it looks like an interesting one. The trouble is, the whole corner has been singed away.
I can’t give you the method, because of the lacuna, but the ingredients are worthy of listing, at least:
1 level tsp gelatine
2 tb hot water
3 heaped tbs powdered milk
8 oz fresh milk
3 heaped tbs dark brown sugar
2 heaped tbs butter, vanilla, salt
brown colouring if required
September 8th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
You know, I might be able to make that butterscotch icecream. I know a bit of the technique. When I have time, I shall try.