It’s cold and wintery outside, and I’m ready to cozy up and enjoy comfort foods. I came across a hundred-year-old recipe for Bacon Cream Soup that fits the bill. The soup was delicious and easy to make.
Here’s the original recipe:
It seemed odd that the old recipe called for putting sliced potatoes (and onions) in the soup. Smaller pieces seem more typical for a soup, so I cut the potatoes, onions, and celery into small pieces. The original recipe calls for whole milk. I think that skim, 1%, 2%, or whole milk would work in this recipe, so I didn’t specify the type of milk when I updated the recipe.
I used all of the fat that I got from cooking the bacon. Unless the bacon is extremely fatty, I don’t think that there is no need to measure out an exact amount of bacon fat for this recipe.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Bacon Cream Soup
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 large onion, coarsely diced into 1/2 inch pieces
3 stalks celery, coarsely diced into 1/2 inch pieces
3 slices bacon
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups milk
Put the potato, onion, and celery pieces into a saucepan, and cover with water. Bring to a boil using high heat, then reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are tender (about 10 minutes). Remove from heat and drain. Set aside.
Fry bacon until crisp in a Dutch oven or other large pan, then remove the cooked bacon from the pan, and break into small pieces. Set aside.
Stir the flour into the hot bacon fat. Slowly add the milk while constantly stirring and using medium heat. Stir in the cooked vegetables and bacon. Heat until hot and steamy, then serve.
Sounds yummy! But bacon in anything makes it delicious!
Agree – bacon makes many foods better. 🙂
Sounds very nice–reminds me of zuppa toscana a little. I am not a celery fan, so I think I will use spinach in mine, but I do love the flavor of bacon, onion, and potato in soup.
Celery was very popular a hundred years ago, and used in recipes more back then. Spinach would be a good substitute. I’ve never had zuppa toscana, but it might be similar.
That soup sounds perfect for a cold winter day, and I usually have all the ingredients on hand. Wonderful pick!
Nice to hear that you liked this post. This soup would be wonderful on a cold winter day.
Sounds yummy but the calorie count on the old recipe! Hopefully it’s for the whole pot but probably not. 😯
I think that the calorie count was for the entire recipe. My general sense is that a hundred years ago that they had not yet come up with the concept of dividing the total number of calories in a recipe by the number of servings.