№ 43Zupa ar iztrītām cukuru saknēm

Puréed skirret soup Serves 4 · 50 minutes · Adapted from the 1796 recipe; not yet tested.

The book gives no quantities; the amounts below are ours.

Ingredients

• 750 g skirret, or parsnips as a substitute (see Notes)
• 1.2 l light chicken or veal stock (our addition)
• Salt, to taste (our addition)

Method

1. Scrub the skirret and trim off the tops and the thin rootlets. If using parsnips, peel them and cut out the woody core of large ones. Cut into 3 cm pieces. 2. Put the roots in a saucepan with the stock, bring to the boil and simmer, partly covered, for about 30 minutes, until very soft. 3. Pass the roots and stock through a food mill, or press them through a coarse sieve, which is closest to the book's colander. You can also blend until smooth and then sieve to catch the fibres. 4. Return the purée to the pan and bring it back to the boil. Add a little more stock or water if it is too thick, and season with salt.

Notes

• What the book says vs. what we added: the book has you boil "a good lot" of nice white skirret until quite soft (half an hour, it says, is usually enough), rub them through a colander and bring the soup back to the boil. It never says what they cook in; "the soup" suggests a stock, so we use a pale one, which keeps the soup white. The stock and the salt are our additions.
• Skirret: cukursaknes (German Zuckerwurzel, Sium sisarum) is an old root vegetable with bunches of thin, sweetish white roots, now grown mostly by enthusiasts and specialist growers. Older roots have a tough core that stays behind in the sieve, which may be why the book purées them.
• Substitute: parsnips are the closest common substitute but taste stronger. For a milder soup, replace a third of them with peeled floury potato.