Not Delia

Marguerite Patten’s Windsor Soup

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by

Not Delia
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In her excellent book, Marguerite Patten’s Century of British Cooking, Marguerite gives two recipes for Windsor soup (you can also see our comments about the dish here). One is a clear version and one a thicker, heartier version which, she says, is the Windsor soup known today. She calls that one Thick Windsor Soup. Here is her version of clear Windsor soup.

Version 1 – Windsor Soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

  • 1 calf’s foot
  • 225g/8 oz stewing beef, diced
  • few beef bones
  • 2.1 litres/3½ pt water
  • bouquet garni
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 150 ml/¼ pt Madeira wine

To garnish:

  • chopped parsley
  • croutons of diced fish (see method)

Method

Wash the calf’s foot, put into the pan with the beef bones, water, herbs and seasoning. Bring to the boil and then skim. Cover the pan and simmer gently for 2-2½ hours. Strain carefully. You should have approximately 1½ litres (2½ pints) of liquid. Reheat with the wine and any extra seasoning required. Garnish and serve. A topping of diced lobster, crayfish or anchovy gives an unusual, pleasant flavour.

Marguerite Patten’s Century of British Cooking

Buy from Amazon UK
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Marguerite Patten
Hardback, 336 pages
1999, Grub Street
ISBN 1 902304 14 4
RRP: £25.00


Comments

2 responses to “Marguerite Patten’s Windsor Soup”

  1. Erik

    Calf’s foot…is this anything like ham hock, only from a different animal. By this, I mean to ask if it is used to flavor the soup as much as to provide meat.

  2. Not Delia

    Hi Erik

    That’s an interesting question, thanks. A calf’s foot is mainly used for releasing gelatin, and in this case presumably Marguerite Patten was using it as a thickener for her soup. I didn’t use a calf’s foot in the brown Windsor soup I made. I went for Jamie’s version with the pearl barley, and used Marmite to make the “beef” stock. A bit of a cheat, but it was tasty all the same.

    I’d thought that a ham hock was a joint of ham for eating (ie providing meat rather than just flavour). But you’re right! It’s mainly for providing flavour – see the Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_hock It’s nice to learn something new, so thanks for that.

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