As HG luxuriates in front of a crackling fire at his New Mexico home watching news reports of three foot snow drifts battering the East Coast, HG notices a funny sensation. A nostalgic hunger for the soups HG’s Mom fed the family. They warmed HG and family in the winter and cooled them in the summer. Winter-time soups were either kapustah or potato soup. Kapustah, as HG recollects it, was a cabbage, onion, tomato, garlic melange in a beef broth enlivened with chunks of boiled beef. This was topped with a big ladle full of sour cream plus some fiery, freshly grated horseradish. With a few slices of Stuhmer’s (or Pechter’s) pumpernickel (with the savory spread of chicken fat and coarse salt) this was a solid, filling, cold weather dinner. The potato soup was simple. Just boiled potatoes and onions in a rich beef stock. A lunch dish. Warm weather soups were beet borscht and schav, both served cold. Mom’s borscht was incomparable. She used something she called “sour salt” to balance the sugary earthiness of the beets, giving the soup a distinctive sweet-tart taste. It received the usual topping of sour cream plus a healthy shower of chopped scallions and radishes. It was accompanied by a hot, buttered boiled potato. Schav was a sorrel soup, mouth puckeringly sour. Unlike the English Sorrel soup, the sorrel in Schav is not pureed but left in its leafy state. This soup was served icy cold (sometimes ice cubes were added to the bowl). Sour cream, naturally, and the obligatory boiled potato. During those non-air conditioned years of yesteryear, schav was a lifesaver on a blazing New York summer day.
[…] HG used the cover of Les Krims‘ wonderful book, Making Chicken Soup to illustrate HG’s post on his Mom’s soups. This illustration drew much comment. To clarify, the elderly model making chicken soup in the nude […]