welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to
sunday morning and the old cookbook show
today we're going to do a recipe out of
this old cookbook sent in by
some viewers thank you very much for the
books and it is
mrs beaton's cookery new edition
now i have no clue maybe a little bit of
a clue but no
real firm evidence of what year this was
published
somewhere between 1901 and 1927
and i'm thinking probably between the
end of world war one and the beginning
of the great depression
and there's not it's not dated so a
little bit about mrs beaton while i
start on the recipe we're gonna make a
tomato soup by the way
is that uh mrs beaton her husband
published a magazine
and so in the late 1850s she started
publishing stories in this magazine they
were cookery stories they were
they're stories about managing your
household and recipes and all that sort
of thing
and at the end of the 1850s 1859
they started doing a serialized cookbook
and by 1861 they published an actual
cookbook
and this publishing went on through the
early 1860s
until mrs beaton dies in 1865.
her husband falls on hard financial
times ends up
selling the rights to the cookbook to
another publisher
the other publisher obfuscates the death
of mrs beaton
and continues on publishing and
improving and increasing this cookbook
treating mrs beaton as an actual person
until they finally have to give up and
say yes
she's dead and at that point it really
becomes a brand
and so this cookbook was published over
and over and over and over and
brought up to date and the recipes have
been improved and it was published
in england it was published in australia
the reversions published here in canada
and it's become a very important cookery
book for this time period
so the instructions are to fry off some
bacon or some ham
and then add to it some diced carrot and
onions so that's going to go in and
we'll continue frying that until they're
all
softened and i really like this cookbook
because it's
plain and simple so many cookbooks that
you see
are written with these giant
aspirational recipes that have
ingredients that you can't get
or techniques that you can't possibly
ever master at home
or you can't possibly ever master at
home if you've only made the recipe once
this cookbook is plain it's simple it's
straightforward it's written for people
who
are decidedly middle class
it uses ingredients that are easy to
obtain
and it also relies i'm not going to say
heavily but fairly heavily
on using products that are
convenience products there's recipes in
here for curry where she tells you to go
out and get the best curry powder
or even a curry paste a tinned curry
paste
and so this is you know the early 1900s
and she's relying on these foods and
this recipe says that you can use fresh
or
canned tomatoes there's a whole section
on using tinned meats
it really is a good straightforward
recipe book that i can see using today
in the 2020s because everything's
available and none of the recipes in
here
are really going to break the bank
although there are recipes for things
that i can no longer find like
tinned lamb's tongue i know that you can
still get tinned lamb's tongue
probably in new zealand and australia
not available here
and i can't even find it online anyone
that will ship me a can
because i'd really like to try the
recipe okay the next thing in
is a can of tomatoes
so just stir that in next she calls for
a bouquet garni
of parsley thyme
and bay leaves and i'm not going to tie
that up real nice
i'm just going to put it in i'll fish
the bay leaves out before we move on to
the part where we
blitz this up or put it through a
strainer is what she actually asks for
so now i'm supposed to cook this for
about 15 minutes
so i'll just let that simmer away and
come together
now the next instruction is to add some
stock and then
let it simmer away on the stovetop until
all the vegetables are really soft
and because you're supposed to rub this
through a
sieve in order to make it a nice smooth
soup i imagine this next step could take
25 or 30 minutes
not too long really when you're thinking
about making a soup
now the veg has gotten nice and soft so
i'm going to fish out the bay leaf
i'm going to leave the thyme and the
parsley in there
the recipe tells me to force it through
a wire sieve so we're supposed to make
the
soup completely smooth i'm really torn
about that because i'm looking at this
soup and i'm thinking
looks really good as a chunky soup and i
think i'd serve it
just like this and it would be fantastic
but mrs beaton wants smooth soup so
we're going to make it smooth
now you could force this through a wire
mesh strainer
if you have one and you want to go
through that process you can stick this
in a countertop blender i'm going to use
a stick blender because
i've got one and it's fairly easy
so i'm just going to blend this until
it's smooth
okay i think this is looking pretty good
i think we are pretty smooth it's kind
of thick
too um which leads me to an ingredient
that we're about to put in which is
sago it asks for a tablespoon to find
sago and i guess that's to
thicken up the soup and if you can't
find fine
sago where you live fine tapioca or
minute tapioca would work just as well
so i'm going to put that in and we
finally reached the point in the recipe
where she asks us to season it with salt
and pepper
so this is seasoned with salt and pepper
at this point to taste
we're supposed to bring this back up to
a boil until the
sago is translucent or firm or cooked
through
and that will add that little bit of
thickening
hey jules hey glenn hey friends smells
good in here
tomato soup uh get some spoons and i
will dish out the soup
now um it looks very like a classic
tomato soup recipe
it it well it is i mean it is from mrs
beaton's cookbook
sometime between 1901 and 1927 i think
this one was published
who knows i put um sago in this or
tapioca
you could use either sega or tapioca i
know they're different things
they do the same thing in the soup but i
don't think you have to put it in i
don't think
that um that it changed the soup at all
having tasted it a little bit before you
came in i cheated
where does the smoky flavor come from
it's the bacon oh that's bacon
bacon of course so the bacon is um is
fried first and put
into the soup and if you were to her
instruction is to put it through a fine
sieve
the bacon would never get through the
fine sieve i was going to say why would
you sift out your bacon
exactly i see it now now that i've you
know second scoop in i can see a little
tiny piece i just took an immersion
blender and blended it smooth
and i think for 2021 that's probably the
way to go
leave the bacon in there
you don't think the tapioca or the sago
was for thickening it at all like i
i think the seigo from the recipe is
there to thicken it a little bit but
again because i used an immersion
blender or if you used a blender on the
countertop
it's going to be naturally thicker than
if you forced it through a sieve
so i don't know that it's completely
necessary that's a very lovely soup the
flavor is fantastic i really like the
flavor
some toast and i'm good to go
so this is beaton's cookbook i think
there's some amazing
recipes in there that are completely
transferable to today
they're simple straightforward easy
ingredients
and not all that expensive to make there
you go mrs beaton
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you