A brown-glazed earthenware bowl of thick pale yellow cornmeal soup with small soft cubes of unpeeled potato and a few dice of turnip, on a plain gray-blue painted board. — Thick cornmeal soup with small cubes of potato and turnip.

Soyer’s Potato Soup No. 3 (1857)

Name: Soyer's Potato Soup No. 3
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 2 h 30 min
Total time: 2 h 50 min
Cuisine: Irish
Ingredients: 30 g beef dripping; 55 g boneless beef shin, cut into 2.5 cm cubes; 55 g turnip, peeled and cut into 1 cm dice; 570 ml cold water; 340 g fine yellow cornmeal; 4 l hot water; 225 g potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 cm dice; 4 tsp salt; 1 tsp soft brown sugar; ½ tsp ground black pepper; 1 clove garlic, crushed; ¼ tsp ground celery seed; ⅛ tsp dried mint

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Soyer’s Potato Soup No. 3: his maize flour soup with a pound of diced potatoes boiled in for the last twenty minutes, written for famine families who could get potatoes once a week.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 28, 2026

Recipe makes: About 4.7 liters of soup, 8 bowls
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 2 hr 30 min
Total: 2 hr 50 min

About 10 minutes of frying, 15 minutes to the boil, 1 hour 40 minutes at a gentle boil, 20 minutes more with the potatoes, then 5 minutes to season. Stir every 10 minutes throughout.

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Thick cornmeal soup with small cubes of potato and turnip.

The story behind the recipe

Soyer wrote his Receipt No. 3 for families who had “the chance of procuring a few potatoes once a week.” It takes his maize flour soup, No. 2, and boils a pound of diced potatoes in it for the last twenty minutes, so that the soup “will strongly taste of potato.” His table adds a penny to the cost, sevenpence for two gallons, about £4.60 today by UK consumer prices (Bank of England).

Written in the present tense

The book is from 1857, but the receipt reads like 1847. Soyer explains that a family who “had previously fed on that root, and who are now nearly deprived of that food,” would welcome potato soup once a week, and the italic now is his. In Ireland the potato had failed in 1845 and much worse in 1846, and the potato soup speaks of that loss in the present tense. The opening of the section says that some of its receipts are reprinted from the famine year, though it does not list which. The failure of the crop and the Dublin kitchen that followed it are the subject of What Did Soyer’s Dublin Soup Kitchen Serve in 1847?.

A pound to two gallons

The amounts are small. Here a pound of potatoes stretches over two gallons of soup, in a country where, by the historian Ian Miller’s account, an estimated four in ten people had lived mainly on potatoes before the blight. Soyer called the potato “that inconstant root,” and he timed it short, twenty minutes or a little longer, so that the boiling would keep its “aroma.” He treated the soup as a weekly event: a family would “worship the day of the week” it came to the table.

Making it today

Halving his pot leaves half a pound of potatoes. He asked only that they be washed and the black spots picked out, so they go in unpeeled. The soup they are boiled in is our Soyer’s Soup No. 2 (1857), with the same stand-ins for his maize flour and his bottled essences.

Receipt No. 3.
No. 2. … 6
As No. 2—and add one pound of potatoes … 1
7
For those who have the chance of procuring a few potatoes once a week, they may be used with advantage in the following manner:—
Having prepared the soup according to Receipt No. 2, when nearly done, wash a pound of potatoes, pick out the black spots, if any, and cut them in very small dice; put them into the soup to boil for twenty minutes, or a little longer, until done, and the soup is ready, and will strongly taste of potato; the short time of ebullition preserving all the aroma of that inconstant root.
Having promised to make my receipts public, for the benefit of the laborious classes of society, as well as for the poor, I think that if a man could treat his family once a week with a food called potato soup, each member of it, who had previously fed on that root, and who are now nearly deprived of that food, would worship the day of the week when such a luxury should be displayed on their humble table.

Alexis SoyerSoyer’s Culinary Campaign (London: G. Routledge & Co.; New York: 18, Beekman Street, 1857), Receipts for the Needy, Receipt No. 3, pp. 559–560

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Ingredients

For about 4.7 liters of soup, 8 bowls. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for about 4.7 liters of soup, 8 bowls.

Beef dripping30 g
Boneless beef shin, cut into 2.5 cm cubes55 g
Turnip, peeled and cut into 1 cm dice55 g
Cold water570 ml
Fine yellow cornmeal340 g
Hot water4 l
Potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 cm dice225 g
Salt4 tsp
Soft brown sugar1 tsp
Ground black pepper1/2 tsp
Garlic, crushed1 clove
Ground celery seed1/4 tsp
Dried mint1/8 tsp

Ingredients as written here

30 g beef dripping
55 g boneless beef shin, cut into 2.5 cm cubes
55 g turnip, peeled and cut into 1 cm dice
570 ml cold water
340 g fine yellow cornmeal
4 l hot water
225 g potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 cm dice
4 tsp salt
1 tsp soft brown sugar
½ tsp ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
¼ tsp ground celery seed
⅛ tsp dried mint

Equipment

Heavy soup pot, at least 6 liters
Mixing bowl and whisk
Bowl for the potatoes
Long-handled wooden spoon
Kettle
Ladle

Instructions

Scrub the potatoes, cut out any dark spots, green patches or eyes, and cut them into 1 cm dice. Keep them under cold water in a bowl until the soup is nearly done.
Warm the beef dripping over medium heat in the soup pot and fry the beef shin with the turnip for about 10 minutes, until the meat has colored a little.
In the mixing bowl, whisk the fine yellow cornmeal smooth in the cold water. Scrape it into the pot, then add the hot water gradually from the kettle, stirring as you pour so no lumps form, and bring the pot up to a boil.
Lower the heat to a gentle bubble, set the lid ajar and cook for 1 hour 40 minutes. Scrape the bottom and corners every 10 minutes, standing back a little, as boiling cornmeal spits, and thin the soup with hot water whenever it gets thicker than a thin porridge.
Drain the potatoes, add them to the pot and boil gently for 20 minutes more, stirring at the same intervals, until a knife slides easily through a cube.
Season with the garlic, ground celery seed, dried mint, salt, soft brown sugar and ground black pepper, give it 2 more minutes and ladle it out hot. By then the beef has boiled for two hours, well past its safe minimum of 145°F (63°C).

Nutrition

230calories per serving

Recipe makes: About 4.7 liters of soup, 8 bowls
Servings: 8

Estimated per bowl (8) from USDA FoodData Central values for potato, degermed yellow cornmeal, beef shank, beef tallow, turnip and brown sugar.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

This pot is half his. For his full two gallons, double everything and stir more often, since a larger pot of cornmeal catches sooner.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

This is half of Soyer’s pot: one gallon of his No. 2, with 225 g of potatoes for his pound. The base carries every change we made to No. 2, and the beef is fried with the turnip because his table lists it while his method never says when it goes in. The 1 cm dice are his “very small dice,” and the twenty minutes are his own timing. Cool leftovers in shallow containers and chill them within 2 hours; they keep 3 to 4 days. The soup sets firm when cold, so loosen it with water as it reheats to 165°F (74°C).

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.