From a 19th century recipe for black bean soup.
Ingredients:
- 1 pint black beans
- 2 quarts cold water
- 1 small onion
- 2 stalks celery, or 1/4 tsp celery salt
- 1/2 Tblsp salt
- 1/8 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp mustard
- cayenne, a few grains
- 3 Tblsp butter
- 1 1/2 Tblsp flour
- 2 hard boiled eggs
- 1 lemon
Preparation:
Soak beans over night; in the morning drain and add cold water. Slice onion, and cook five minutes with half the butter, adding to beans, with celery stalks broken in pieces. Simmer three or four hours, or until beans are soft; add more water as water boils away. Rub through a sieve, reheat to the boiling point, and add salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne well mixed. Bind with remaining butter and flour cooked together. Cut eggs in thin slices, and lemon in thin slices, removing seeds. Put in tureen, and strain the soup over them.
From Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, Fannie Merritt Farmer, 1896.
The recipes in this collection are representative of cooking in America in the late 19th century, and the compilation of a cookbook shows the ways in which women were beginning to organize and act both within their traditional roles and outside of traditional expectations. The recipes are presented exactly as written in 1896, and may not conform to current nutritional or food preparation standards. Try at your own risk.
