[Sca-cooks] soup

[Dan Phelps]

> Daniel asked:
> > What about a nut soup, say with chestnuts?
>
> Hmmm, is this like peanut soup? I'm not sure when I will be able to
> get chestnuts here, but please post a recipe.

I've several but all but one are cream or puree soups here is the odd one
that is not.

The following is cribbed directly from:

"The Old World Kitchen" Elisabeth Luchard  ISBN 0-553-05219-5
pages 14 and 15

Nice cookbook, generally periodoid but not "period recipes" if you avoid the
ones with New World ingredients.

Chestnut Soup (Puchero de castanas)(Spain)

serves 6
time 90 minutes

2 lbs chestnuts
1 1/2 quarts homemade stock or water
1 bay leaf
one 2 oz slab of bacon cubed
4 oz jamon serrano or prosciutto, cubed (optional)
1 carrot, scrubbed and cubed
1 onion cubed
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon sugar

Preheat oven to 300 F.  You will need a saucepan and a frying pan.  Roast
the chestnuts in the oven for half an hour.  Peel them when they are cool
enough to handle.  Put them in a sauce pan and cover them with the stock or
water.  Put in the bay leaf.  Leave to stew gently for another half hour.

Put the bacon in a frying pan and sweat it gently so that the fat runs.  Add
the ham, carrot, and onion.  Cook for 5 minutes; then add the contents of
the pan to the stewing chestnuts.  Simmer togeather for another 15 minutes.
Taste, and season with salt, fresh ground pepper, and the sugar.  Serve in
deep bowls, accompanied by good bread and a bottle of dry white wine for the
plains of the Guadalquivir below the mountains.

> Are there any nut soups which are period? Or would this have been
> considered peasant food and thus not written down in the books we
> have?

Didn't find any looked in Apicius, Early French, and the Medieval Kitchen.

Daniel Raoul