🇺🇸 United States · Virginia and the American South (Williamsburg taverns)
Virginia peanut soup
A creamy Virginia soup of peanut butter or ground peanuts with butter, flour, stock and light cream, with celery and onion in the home version, garnished with chopped peanuts.
Origin and history
The Museum of the New South says Virginia peanut soup was popularised by Williamsburg taverns, can be traced to the 1700s, and has no known creation date; King's Arms Tavern, which opened in 1772, put Creme of Peanut Soupe on its menu. Sarah Rutledge's The Carolina Housewife (1847) holds the first known written recipe, which food scholars think may adapt one from enslaved African cooks. Middleburg Life says West Africans made an early groundnut soup and that enslaved African cooks in North America are believed to have adapted it with chicken stock, butter, flour and, later, peanut butter.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 7 small starter servings
- Total time
- 50 min
- Hands-on
- 20 min
Ingredients
- 55 g4 tbsp butter
- 1/2 small onion, diced
- 1 stalk celery, diced
- 12 g1 1/2 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 liter4 cups hot chicken broth
- 250 g1 cup smooth peanut butter, unsweetened
- 1 pinch celery salt, about 1/6 tsp
- 3 g1/2 tsp salt, to taste
- 60 ml1/4 cup light cream
- ground or chopped peanuts, to garnish
Method
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1. Melt the butter in a large pan and cook the onion and celery for about 5 minutes, without letting them brown.
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2. Stir in the flour, then add the hot broth and simmer for 30 minutes.
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3. Strain the soup into a clean pot, pressing the vegetables lightly, and discard them.
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4. Off the heat, whisk in the peanut butter until smooth, then add the celery salt and salt.
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5. Stir in the cream and warm gently without boiling.
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6. Serve hot in small cups or bowls, scattered with ground peanuts.
Notes
- Scaled to half from the Red Fox Inn's traditional recipe as printed by Middleburg Life (15 servings: 2 quarts of broth, 1/4 lb butter, 3 tbsp flour, a pint of peanut butter, 1/2 cup cream, 1/3 tsp celery salt, 1 tsp salt, a small onion and 2 stalks of celery). It is a smooth first-course soup, served in small portions; the source never says when the salt goes in, so season at the end.
- A thinner, more savoury soup if you use less peanut butter; make it richer with extra cream.
- The earliest known written peanut soup recipe, from Sarah Rutledge's 1847 The Carolina Housewife as quoted by the Museum of the New South, is very different: half a pint of shelled groundnuts, two teaspoons of flour, a pint of oysters, a pint and a half of water and a red pepper or two.
- Middleburg Life also prints a modern version with coconut milk, tamari, lime and brown sugar; it is not the traditional Virginia soup.
- Make ahead and reheat gently, adding broth if it has thickened.
Adapted from Middleburg Life, Peanut soup in a nutshell (Red Fox Inn style recipe) and Museum of the New South, Southern Tables: Peanut Soup.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.