SC - Onion Soups

[Stephen Bloch]

Brighid (or Robin) wrote:
> ...  Here is a translation of 
> a recipe from the 1528 edition of the "Libro de Guisados"....
> 
> Potage of Onions Which They Call "Cebollada"
> 
> Take peeled onions which are well washed and clean and cut them in 
> thick slices, and cast them in a pot of boiling water, and then 
> having let them come to a boil once or twice, take them out of the 
> pot and press them between two wooden chopping boards and them fry 
> them gently with good fatty bacon or with bacon grease, stirring with 
> a little shovel and moving it about in the frying pan with the 
> aforementioned little shovel which should be of wood.  And if the 
> onions dry up, cast in some good fatty mutton broth until the onions 
> are well cooked.  And then take almonds which are well peeled and 
> white and grind them well in a mortar and then dissolve them in 
> good mutton broth and pass them through a woolen strainer and then 
> cast the almond milk in the pot with the onions and mix it well, and 
> cook them well until the onions are cooked in the almond milk, and 
> cast good grate cheese from Aragon in the pot, and stir well with a 
> stirrer as if they were gourds, and when they are well mixed with the 
> cheese and you see that it is cooked, prepare dishes, first casting 
> into the pot a pair of egg yolks for each dish, and upon the dishes 
> cast sugar and cinnamon if you wish; and it is good.

Even in translation, this looks very much as though it was copied from
the 14th-c. Catalan _Llibre de Sent Sovi_, which says (our translation):

95 Cebada or Porada (onion or pea pottage) with milk
Take peas or onions, wash them well, cut them not too small, and make
sure not to put in any green.  And put them in water to soften until
morning.  And then wash them twice in hot water and once with cold.
And then put it to cook with plenty of grease, and cook well for the
third part of a day.  And leave it for a morning, and don't stop
stirring it.  And when it is nearly done, put in good goat's milk,
according to [?] whether cebada or porada, and good aged cheese; and if
you don't have goat's milk, use almond milk.  And this goes in the
cebada or porada.  And cook until thick as for squash.  And when thick,
remove the pot from the fire, and manage it until it stops boiling.
And then [...?] beaten eggs, and mix them in bit by bit.  And when you
dish it out, if you wish, gild it with finely ground cinnamon and good
white sugar, and put this above and below the dishes, because [...?]

We conflated the "onion" and "pea" versions of the dish in our
redactions, which we eventually used as a "vegetarian alternative" for a
feast a year ago.  Here's the better of our two redactions.

Make almond milk: 4 cups water and 1 cup of almonds.  Let settle and
strain.  Wash 1 lb (2 cups) dried split peas (the package says they
don't need soaking).  Put in crock-pot on high (10:15 AM) with 6 cups
water, 1 T vegetable bouillon, 6 T butter.  An hour before serving, add
strained almond milk and 10 oz. grated cheddar cheese and heat through
without boiling.  Just before serving, beat 5 eggs at room temperature
(Joy of Cooking says 1 yolk/cup to thicken, but this should be pretty
thick already), gradually stir in some broth, and add back to the
soup.  Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar at the table.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
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