Bean Soup Recipe 1
Fry a sliced onion in a tablespoonful of butter; add to the beans, with a piece of celery root. Boil gently till the beans are soft, adding cold water as it boils away; this checks too rapid boiling and softens the beans. Then rub them through a strainer, and add salt, cayenne pepper, and a saltspoonful of mustard; let it come to a boil, and thicken with a tablespoonful of flour and 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, which have been cooked together; this prevents the beans from settling. Slice a lemon and 2 hard-boiled eggs into the tureen, and pour over the hot soup.
Serve with croutons. If tomatoes are desired, add half a can before straining; and a quarter pound of salt pork, or bones and odds and ends of meat, may be an improvement.
The beans may be boiled to pulp, sifted, and thinned with brown soup stock, and when seasoned with ground herbs, spices, force-meat balls, and wine, is not unlike mock-turtle soup.
