Karl Marx's beetroot and potato soup
A colour no amount of styling could invent
Doubles in a wide pan without any change to the timings. Freezes for up to three months in individual portions, without the cream, which is best added fresh.
Beetroot is not named on the leaflet this book follows, but it behaves like the root vegetables that are, peeled and cooked until a knife meets no resistance, then blended and pushed hard through a sieve so nothing fibrous survives. What comes through is a deep, saturated magenta that needs nothing else in the bowl to earn its place on the page. A swirl of cream drawn across the surface turns startlingly white the moment it touches the beetroot, and holds its shape for a minute before the two colours begin to bleed together. Worth knowing before the first spoonful: beetroot can turn what comes out the other end a similar shade of pink, and there is nothing wrong when it does.
From the chronicle · Soho, 1852
A man I sat beside in a Farringdon café in 1974, both of us waiting out the same rain, told me his grandmother had scrubbed the stairs at 28 Dean Street as a girl and had never got the smell of the top floor out of her memory. Two rooms, a family, a table that was desk and dining table by turns, and Helene Demuth keeping the whole thing going on money that arrived from Manchester in envelopes. Marx wrote through the night, slept into the day, and his liver, by his own account, was already at war with him. A liver in that state takes the appetite and the bowel down with it, and nobody at Dean Street was eating well in any case. So Lenchen made a soup that asked nothing of anyone, beetroot and potato boiled until the knife met nothing, and worked it through a sieve with the back of a spoon until there was nothing left in the pan but colour. The grandmother remembered the bowls coming down the stairs stained to the rim. She said she had taken it for ink.
The people, places and dates are real. The meal and the conversation are not. Read more about the chronicle.
Ingredients
Contains: Milk, Celery
- 300 gcooked beetroot, peeled, cooked until completely soft and cut into rough chunks. Vacuum-packed in water and drained is easiest, but never the pickled kindHospitals differ
Beetroot: Hospitals differ
Why the preparation matters. Peel it and cook it until completely soft, then purée it or sieve it. Never grate it raw.
Where hospitals differ. The leaflet this book follows does not name beetroot. It is treated as a peeled root vegetable cooked soft, like carrot.
The beetroot is cooked soft, blended and pushed through a sieve, so nothing fibrous survives into the bowl.
If your team says no. Leave it out and use extra potato instead, for a pale soup rather than a magenta one.
Sources: St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
More about beetroot - 200 gpotato, peeled and diced
- 700 mlclear vegetable or chicken stock, strained clear, or a good stock cubePreparation matters
Stock (chicken, beef, vegetable, dashi): Preparation matters
Why the preparation matters. Keep it clear and strained, with no vegetable pieces.
Sources: East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, Department of Nutrition & Dietetics
More about stock (chicken, beef, vegetable, dashi) - 15 gunsalted butter
- salt
- 60 mldouble cream, to swirl on top
Method
Put the beetroot, potato and stock in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, until the potato is completely soft and breaks apart when pressed with a spoon.
Stir in the butter until melted.
Blend the soup until completely smooth, then push it through a fine sieve into a clean pan, pressing hard with the back of a spoon until only a smooth, deep magenta liquid runs through. Discard the fibre caught in the mesh.
Warm the sieved soup through gently and season with salt.
Ladle into two bowls and draw a spoonful of cream across the surface of each, in a single line or a loose spiral, so the white sits on top of the magenta rather than mixing into it.
Watch-points
- Use plain vacuum-packed cooked beetroot in water, not the pickled kind in vinegar. Pickled beetroot is sharp and will not taste right here.
- Peel the beetroot first if you are cooking your own rather than using a ready-cooked pack, and cook it until it is completely soft before it goes in.
- Blend the soup fully, then push it through a fine sieve and throw away everything left in the mesh, so no fibrous strand from the beetroot or the potato survives.
- Peel the potato before it goes in.
- Use a stock that is clear and strained, with nothing floating in it.
- Chill anything you are not eating within the hour, covered, and finish it within two days. Cut that to one day if you are having chemotherapy, and bring it back to a full steam when you reheat it.
Some hospitals do not name beetroot on their list at all; the leaflet this book follows treats it as a peeled root vegetable, cooked soft and sieved, in the same way as carrot. Leave it out if you have been told to, and use an extra 150 g of potato in its place.
Stoma note: Beetroot can turn stoma output, urine or stool a similar shade of pink for a day or so afterwards. This is harmless and comes from the vegetable itself, not from anything going wrong.
Make it more nourishing
- Whisk 2 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder into the cold stock before it goes on the heat, for around 6 g more protein across the two bowls.
- Use 150 ml of cream instead of 60 ml, stirring most of it through the soup itself and swirling only a spoonful on top.
- Melt a further 15 g of butter into each bowl as you ladle the soup out.
Swaps
- Instead of double cream, use crème fraîche
- a sharper swirl that cuts the sweetness of the beetroot
- Instead of the cream swirl, use smooth natural yoghurt, loosened with a teaspoon of milk
- it sits on the surface in the same way and carries a little more protein
The foods in this recipe
Each of these has a page of its own, with how to prepare it and where hospitals differ.