The Soup Cookbook

Rating:
Summary: Good Basic Soup Cookbook. Not best for US.
Review: `The Soup Cookbook' by Anne Sheasby is the sixth soup cookbook I have reviewed recently, and I find it the weakest of the six by a hair.

Good soup books seem to come in two to three flavors, depending on how you count them. The `upper tier' of books by major American culinary writers and figures such as Barbara Kafka, James Peterson, and Jasper White, published by Wiley and Scribners cover all the classics and the authors' variations on classic recipes. A second tier by, for example, Paulette Mitchell, the `Daily Soup' chef/owners, and Michael Congdon, published by new, small publishers such as Hyperion, Chronicle, and Sasquatch Books present collections of soup recipes which are honed to a fine edge in small restaurants over a long time. Sheasby's work looks very much like the second class of books, without the condition that the recipes are all creations of the author(s), regardless of how deeply the recipes are based on classic soup models. Instead, this volume is distinguished by being part of a publisher's series of cookbooks written by professional cookbook writers and edited by a common editor. Some of these series, such as the Time / Life series from the 1960s, edited by noted food writer Richard Olney, deserve recognition, these series are often on a fast track to the budget bins.

I am happy to say that this volume has more value than the usual discount fodder. Under the influence of Mortimer Adler's classic `How to Read a Book', I am a great fan of reading the minutiae of books forewords, prefaces, acknowledgments, and introductions. There is no better way to know if a book accomplishes its purpose than reading this stuff to see what their purpose was to begin with. Sometimes, this preliminary survey turns up some really interesting stuff, as it does with this book, published in the UK with both American and Australian audiences in mind. I discovered, for example, that an Australian tablespoon is 20 milliliters, not 15 milliliters, like the usual American measurement. And, the book gives a warning that while all recipes are given with both metric and imperial measurements; one should not mix them, as they are not homogeneous. This is a piece of advice that may very well apply to every recipe with dual systems of measurement, yet practically none of these other cookbooks give you this warning. The reason is simple, in that when a cup is converted to metric, it is probably rounded up to 250 milliliters and weights are probably rounded up from ounces to grams. So, there is a slight skew in the alignment of metric and imperial units. But back to our book!

The primary objective of these series books, to my mind, is to provide a reliable source of classic recipes. This book appears to satisfy this minimal requirement by giving us recipes for many traditional soups such as Clam Chowder, Gazpacho, Bouillabaisse, Minestrone, French Onion Soup, Mulligatawny Soup, Matzo ball soup, Thai Chicken soup, and Vichyssoise, plus many more. I am a bit less enthusiastic about the quality of the recipe writing. The book gives a very nice little introduction to soup ingredients and methods, which bears all the marks of having been written in England, as Zucchini is called Courgettes and Rutabaga is called Swede. It even includes some novel information on a generally unknown class of macaroni called `soup pasta', miniature shapes most classically represented by the noodles in alphabet soup. But here, there are some hints that the author may not be totally in touch with her subject when she endorses fresh pastas over dried pasta, when these little shapes are available almost entirely in dried `macaroni' form and not as fresh noodles. And, virtually every expert in Italian cookery agrees that fresh and dried pastas are simply two different products, each with their own best uses.

Another little annoyance is in the choice of kitchen tool to cream soups. The author generally gives a wide range of options, including a variation on the food mill called a mouli-legume. I have never seen this beast and I am assuming it is not your standard food mill, which is simply not nearly as good as a stick blender, a Waring style blender, or a food processor, especially if you want a really smooth puree. I prefer the blender, but I admire Mr. Congdon's recipes written all from the point of view of the same limited set of equipment, where he uses the food processor.

There are other little anomalies, such as the double appearance of the recipe for dashi, once in a sidebar and once in the chapter on stocks. Speaking of stocks, I admire the short recipes, but I believe they will give less flavor than some longer cooking options (See Congdon's S.O.U.P.S., for the opposite extreme). I think the simplicity is attributable less to culinary considerations than to keeping it easy for the masses. For a happy medium, consult James Peterson's `Sauces' or his `Splendid Soups' book.

The specific instructions for the soups are all relatively easy. And, many strike me as being too easy. They all fit the pattern of a book designed to bring classic recipes to someone who buys their cookbooks off the wire racks in their megamart. The recipe for New England (cream based) clam chowder for example is much simpler than any of Jasper White's 50 recipes and I have no faith that the product will be as good.

Unlike all the other books mentioned above, I never quite developed a visceral interest in this book. The book never quite breaks out of its aura of being a simple commodity written by someone who collects recipes, and simplifies them a bit to attract someone who needs some familiar soup recipes.

This is not a poor book, but others are better, especially for American readers.