Peanut butter soup

1 quart milk
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 apple, grated
1 lemon, juice only
Cinnamon, nutmeg, or a pinch of ginger

Scald milk and add peanut butter softened with the lemon juice. Let stand in a warm place for fifteen minutes. Add grated apple, beat well, and flavor. Serve piping hot in heated bowl.

Supplies necessary minerals and elements, protein, fat and vitamin content. Serves 4.

From Meatless Meals by Jean Prescott Adams (pseud. Leona A. Malek), a "home economics lecturer, editor and consultant." Published by Laird and Lee, Chicago (1943; orig. 1931). This curious green book—light green, like a snow pea—is illustrated with sometimes terrifying and always bizarre drawings by Eleanore Mineah Hubbard: dancing kitchen implements; a raunchy sandwich scene with two pieces of bread with arms and legs; sulking tomatoes; a rolling pin courting a dainty pie in pretty sandals. All in black and white.

The book was originally published in 1931, but released again, with a different publisher, in the middle of World War II. Obviously it was relevant to the wartime kitchen. The author emphasizes the "benefits of newer information regarding nutrition." Also, vegetables were not rationed and could be grown in one’s own victory garden.

Most lay vegetarian studies, seeking to free vegetarianism of its 1960s color, look further back in time, to the mid-nineteenth century, and usually to Asian religions, without considering vegetarianism’s practical wartime forms.

In 1931, our author writes that

These foods may be called sun quality carriers. They bring to the body various essential vitamins and chemical elements direct from sun and soil. They supply elements that act as protective and corrective agents in the body.

Her tone seems particularly affected, but her prose was not as holistically voodooesque as it reads today. It was based on new science. Novel—and in hindsight incorrect—nutritional theories will be a theme to which I oft return in these posts.

A traditional element of fear also drives the work:

The millions of American home-makers interested in a normal development of their children in the prevention of anemia and tooth decay, in the protection of their children against rickets and abnormalities in bone formation, in the stability of the nerves of the children and the adults of their families, and in the serving of appetizing meals balanced in the smart, modern manner with sufficient fruits and vegetables will welcome this compilation.

I looked forward to cooking this peanut butter soup, because, like most men, Paul loves peanut butter. A personal interest in sweet soups goes back further: my brother Frank and I used to make ice cream soup, letting our ice cream servings melt until they were soft and creamy, never liquid or flat. (Frank and I had also envisioned the wide distribution of a Sprite/Lemonade hybrid we called Squirt.)

Research reveals a widely-held consensus about the early years of peanut butter history. It was first developed by doctors, for poor patients with poor teeth, around the end of the nineteenth century. The process was later mechanized, sparking the interest of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg who used it as a vegetarian source of protein for his patients. The Kellogg brothers patented their process in 1895, explaining that it yielded "a pasty adhesive substance that is for convenience of distinction termed nut butter."

I chose Skippy Super Chunk for my two tablespoons of peanut butter. This was for two reasons. First of all, Skippy was trademarked in 1933, and they produced their first can of chunky peanut butter the same year (citation). It is plausible that it was used at the time of this recipe, though I was not able to identify how Skippy’s 1930s peanut butter differs from today’s. Secondly, I strongly dislike smooth and organic nut butters, and two tablespoons leaves a lot of eating in a jar.

The peanut butter soup was a terrible disaster.

I was careful when scalding the milk (the smallest bubbles, the slightest steam). Then, having softened the peanut butter in the lemon, I added it to the milk and stirred.

Immediately it curdled.

Paul nicely chose to fault the lemon—"too large and too much juice" (a true modern monster at 74c from Stop and Shop). But I believe that I ruined it by stirring too soon (the recipe does not call for beating until after fifteen minutes in its warm place).

Small flecks of curdled, tasteless milk floated in watery, lemony jus. The added nutmeg added nothing. There was no hint of peanut butter. We ate as much of it as we could (very little) and had to throw the rest away. This was a great waste—four cups of milk—of money and resources.

I did not heat the bowls, so we lost some in effect as well.

This disaster reminded me of a story from one of the original Victory Kitchens, in Malta during the Second World War.

The first Victory Kitchen opened in Lija in January 1942. Subscriber numbers peaked during the first week of January 1943, when 175,536 people took their meals at the Kitchens. Through the war, meals cost sixpence a portion.

On 1 September 1942 a meal caused waste on a large scale. A civilian explains that:

The mid-day meals supplied from the Victory Kitchens of Valletta and of several other districts had to be thrown away en masse today. The meal was composed chiefly of liver in a sort of stew. It was hard and had a bitter taste, which made it unpalatable and uneatable. This suggests that the gall had not been removed from the liver either before it was put in cold storage or before it was cooked. To this negligence may be due the fact that valuable food had to be thrown away. A slice of corned beef was passed round hours later.

Suggested pairings with peanut butter soup: corned beef.


References
Popular peanut history
Philip Vella. Malta: Blitzed but not Beaten. Progress Press: 1985.