Blitz Soup
Hearty, if mushy, vegetable soup with honey biscuits and a cup of tea
City/Region: London
Time Period: 1940
If you were taking shelter underground during the Blitz, a period in WWII when German planes bombed British cities, the food options were somewhat limited. You could bring snacks with you, but there were also canteens from which workers sold things like tea, cocoa, soup, biscuits, and chocolate.
This soup, fittingly named Blitz Soup, is mainly composed of fresh vegetables that many would have had access to from their victory gardens. While it’s surprisingly flavorful and delicious, if you cut down the cooking time to about 30 minutes, the vegetables wouldn’t be as mushy. Though either way, a thermos of this soup would have been a comforting meal while taking shelter.
Instead of the historical recipe, which is very basic, here’s the poem that accompanied it.
“When down to your shelter you flitz,
It may not be quite like the Ritz.
If you drink something warm,
You’ll come to no harm,
And the best soup to drink is the ‘Blitz.’
(P.S.- Any vegetables can be used, and you’ll find this a very useful soup to take to the shelter if you have to take cover. We hope you don’t.)”
Ingredients:
- 1 carrot
- 1 turnip
- 1 onion or leek, I used a leek
- 1 to 2 potatoes
- A few stalks of celery
- 6 cups (1.5 L) water
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- A few bones, I used chicken bones*
- 1 teaspoon meat extract or yeast extract, like Marmite
*A lot of people were raising their own chickens during the War, so this seemed right to me. Leftover bones from a rotisserie chicken work well.
Instructions:
- Peel and chop all of the vegetables. The size here is up to you. Keep in mind that the soup will cook for a long time, so no matter their size, the vegetables will be fairly mushy.
- Put the chopped vegetables in a large pot and add the water, salt, pepper, and bones. Bring the pot to a simmer, then cover it and simmer for 1 hour.
- After the hour is up, stir in the meat or yeast extract, and serve it forth.