I shared this, around this time, several years ago:
We’re nearly at the end of April but I came across a suggested menu for the month in my ninety+ year old cookery book. It has a lovely little introduction:
April – Spring is on its way – and we can use the first bluebells with daffodils to give our table a festive air. With mats of Normandy lace – a pretty scheme.
Here is the suggested menu:
corn soup
leg of English lamb and mint sauce
new potatoes
spring cabbage
pineapple pie
anchovy fingers
The anchovy fingers are what’s known as a savoury, a common things in pre-war dinner parties but all that now remains is cheese and biscuits. Corn soup is something I’ve not come across in English cooking – maybe I just haven’t looked, but it sounds really nice! With a few adjustments to suit our taste, I think I might try it, but I have altered the recipe slightly as the original suggests you boil the sweet corn for half an hour!:
Corn soup
- 1 lb sweet corn (tinned or frozen – but defrosted if frozen!)
- 1¼ chicken or vegetable stock
- 2 oz butter
- 1 onion (small or medium, depending on how much you like onion flavour!) finely chopped
- ¾ oz flour
- 1¾ pint milk
- seasoning
- fry the onion in 1 of the ounces of butter until it’s soft, making sure it doesn’t colour
- put corn and onion in a blender and whizz until smooth (the original recipe suggests rubbing through a sieve but that’s hard!) adding as much of the stock as you need (all of it if you have a big blender!)
- add the rest of the butter to the pan, make a roux with the flour then add the milk until you have a white sauce
- add the corn and onion mix and salt and pepper (a little nutmeg or paprika would be nice although that isn’t mentioned in the original recipe!
I think with a little experimentation, this could be very nice – maybe with crispy bacon bits as garnish and a swirl of cream or sour cream!
Lois Elsden 