This article is taken from the June 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here.
In July,” sang Flanders and Swann,
The sun is hot.
Is it shining?
No, it’s not!
Climate mavens, who are always assuring us unconvincingly that whatever summer we are experiencing is the hottest on record, are, I suspect, in league with woke radicals to dismantle Britain.
They want to suppress the traditional notion of a British summer, which — to be consistent with British art, literature and humour — demands “violet lightnings o’er thy sky, Heavy falls of drenching dew” and days when the wise reach for their fishermen’s woollies and stuff the stove with kindling.
Recipe writers who consecrate columns to the cuisine of plein air — salads, picnics, barbecues and clever things with mayonnaise — are probably in league with the climate alarmists.
Nevertheless, occasional hot days happen. The coolest dishes with which to exploit them are chilled soups. The usually fatal deterrent is that cooks get hot and bothered making them.
Recipes tend to be unnecessarily complicated: hieratic and designed for professional chefs or dedicated cooks in a leisured past, demanding a lot of counterintuitive and paradoxical cookery to overheat tempers and boil up ingredients — only so that they can cool down again.
For toilsome overelaboration, vichyssoise is the classic example. It involves sweating leeks, cubing potatoes, boiling them to a pulp, blending with cream, heating again whilst tiring one’s arm with stirring, and leaving to cool before occupying the fridge for an hour or two.
Cold borscht is equally delightful, but in its traditional form you have to sauté chopped onions, and add them to beetroot bubbling in beef stock, with potatoes, celery and cabbage, before thickening with roux and chilling.
Consommé en gélée is, if luxuriously garnished, an insuperable treat but is dangerous and demanding. So much can go wrong whilst you simmer flesh and bones for hours, adding vegetables at appropriate intervals, skimming scum, clarifying with egg white, whisking, sieving and adding gelatine.
I commend trouble-takers, but not troublemakers. I want to conserve the classics, not banish them. But anyone who wants chilled soup to enliven rather than enervate on mephitic days can easily satisfy the craving: vegetables seasonal in Britain in July — tomatoes, broad beans, peas, spinach, watercress, sorrel, celery, sweetheart cabbage, courgettes and summer squashes — can be puréed (raw or blanched) and blended, seasoned and garnished to equal or excel the most elaborate concoctions.
Gazpacho is the model for vegetable purées. The English, I find, think first of tomatoes, but the purpose of gazpacho is to use up stale bread, softening it in olive oil. The poor man’s version may have no other ingredients except garlic and salt.
Adding tomatoes (which must be firm, for gazpacho should not be abused to dispose of inferior vegetables) is an enhancement. So is a slug of sherry. Don’t stint on traditional garnishes: diced onion, cucumber, green peppers and crisp croutons. Celery adds extra crunch. Shreds of jamón serrano add texture and tang.
For tomato-based purées, bread is the ideal thickener. With green vegetables, cream or crème fraiche blend more smoothly. For broad bean soup, shards of crispy bacon make a perfect garnish. With peas (which only work in purée if they are young and tender), shreds of ham or — for meat-averse eaters — mint leaves go well.
Sorrel needs steaming, and (because of the strong flavour) mixing with lettuce or cucumber and blending with cream: candied lavender-petals decorate the dish and complement its sharpness.
Spinach, which shrinks to a risible level, only works in large quantities: lavishly scattered raisins and pine nuts balance the texture and flavour. Celery requires blanching and sieving because of its stringy threads, and blends well with cream and a dab of honey. Sweet, toothsome, vivid accompaniments, such as slices of red pepper, complement watercress — naturally peppery, deliquescent and dull in colour.
Sweetheart cabbage is best if strips of it are left unincorporated in the purée, thickened with yoghurt and seasoned with cayenne and muscovado, whilst sprinkled nutmeg or mace enhances courgettes.
But some like it hot. Humoural theory suggests that cold food may not suit hot weather. Cultures that know the dog-days best sweat them out with ginger-laden curries or chilli-strewn guisados. If that’s how you feel, don’t heat up those cooling soups: garnish them with jalapeños.
