[Sca-cooks] Portable Soup

Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
Wed Nov 9 03:32:46 PST 2011


OED has this entry under portable:

  Of a liquid substance: that may be carried or transported  
conveniently, having been reduced by evaporation to a dried or  
concentrated form able to be reconstituted later by the addition of  
water. Now hist.

1594    H. Platt Jewell House iii. 36   A portable ynke to be caried  
in the forme of a powder in any paper, leather purse or boxe.
1725    E. Strother Ess. Sickness & Health (ed. 2) ii. 49   Consider  
the fashionable and portable Soop, now in Use with the Quality.
1747    H. Glasse Art of Cookery vi. 65   To make Portable Soop‥the  
Glew will be quite hard‥. When you use it, pour boiling Water on it.
1775    tr. Valuable Secrets Arts & Trades p. xxii,   A portable ink,  
without gall-nut or vitriol‥. Another portable powder, to make ink  
instantly.
1836    W. Irving Astoria II. 192   Five pounds of portable soup, and  
a sufficient quantity of dried meat to allow each man a pittance of  
five pounds and a quarter.
1849    Punch 17 91/2   We have all heard of ‘Portable Soup’‥.  
Now we have ‘Portable Milk’. A small jar of this solidified  
material, we are told, contains the equivalent of six gallons of fluid  
milk.

If anyone would like to see recipes, try Google Books and a search  
under "portable soup". Charlotte Mason's recipe from 1787 is there  
and  descriptions from the book Soup Through the Ages, Lobscouse &  
Spotted Dog,
Cooking in America, Feasting & Fasting with Lewis and Clark, etc.

Johnnae

On Nov 9, 2011, at 5:57 AM, Elise Fleming wrote:
> Eduardo wrote:
>
> >There is an article in PPC on portable soup. Not sure which one I  
> am >away from my library.
>
> It's Issue 92.  The recipe, imbedded in a story, is from Elizabeth  
> Raffald's "The Experienced English Housekeeper", 1794 edition.
>
> Alys K.



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