Polish cold fruit soup: strawberries, raspberries and cherries, served with noodles
A summer dinner children need no persuading to eat: fruit simmered in sweetened water with lemon and cinnamon, thickened with potato starch or enriched with sour cream, served cold over noodles. The fruit goes in for five minutes and no longer — a longer boil strips its colour and scent, and the soup turns brownish instead of ruby.
Your own work in that: 25 min.
- Fruit base 15 min
- Thickening 10 min
- Chilling 120 min
Step by step
0 / 6 donePrepare the fruit
Wash and hull the strawberries, halving the larger ones. Stone the cherries. Only pick over the raspberries — don't rinse them under running water, they soak it up and collapse. Set aside a handful of the best-looking fruit for the top.
Ingredients: 400 g strawberries · 150 g raspberries · 150 g sour cherries · 1500 ml water · 80 g sugar · 1 pcs lemon · 1 pcs cinnamon stick · 1 pinch salt
Strawberries halved, cherries stoned, raspberries picked overBoil the sweet base
In a wide pot bring the water to the boil with the sugar, cinnamon stick, strip of lemon zest and a pinch of salt. Boil 5 minutes, until the sugar dissolves and the water takes on the scent of cinnamon and zest.
TipA pinch of salt in a sweet soup is not a mistake: it brings out the fruit and balances the sweetness. Without it the soup can taste flat, however much sugar goes in.
Sugar, cinnamon, zest, five minutesAdd the fruit for five minutes
Add the strawberries and cherries, bring back to the boil and cook 4 minutes. Add the raspberries and cook 1 minute more. Fish out the cinnamon and zest. Squeeze the lemon and set the juice aside for the end.
Ingredients: 400 g strawberries · 150 g raspberries · 150 g sour cherries · 1500 ml water · 80 g sugar · 1 pcs lemon · 1 pcs cinnamon stick · 1 pinch salt
TipThe pigments in these fruits, anthocyanins, are red only in acid conditions and break down under long heat. Lemon juice added at the very end, off the heat, fixes the ruby colour, and a short simmer protects colour and scent — cooked longer, the soup turns brown.
Four minutes, raspberries lastThicken with potato starch
Stir the potato starch into 100 ml cold water to a smooth slurry. Bring the soup to the boil, take it off the heat and pour in the slurry in a thin stream, stirring. Put it back on the heat, bring to the boil once and take it off immediately. Only now stir in the lemon juice — acid boiled with the starch weakens the thickening.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp potato starch · 100 ml water · 200 g sour cream, 18 %
TipPotato starch thickens the moment it boils, but boiled on it <b>thins out again</b> — prolonged heat breaks its starch chains. Hence one boil and the pot leaves the burner.
Slurry in cold water, a single boilCool and chill
Cool the soup, pour it into a jug and refrigerate 2 hours. Taste it cold: chilled food reads as less sweet, so it may want a spoon more sugar than it did warm.
Two hours in the fridge, then taste againCook the noodles and serve
Cook the noodles separately in salted water, drain and rinse under cold water. Put them in bowls, pour the cold soup over and add the reserved fresh fruit. A spoon of sour cream for anyone who wants it. Without the noodles the soup keeps 3 days in the fridge.
Ingredients: 200 g fine egg noodles
TipAlways cook and store the noodles apart. Left in the soup they drink it up overnight, swell, and leave you with fruit in gruel instead of soup.
Noodles separate, rinsed cold
Before you start
The creamy version
Instead of potato starch: mix 200 g sour cream with 2 spoons of the cold soup, then four more, and only then pour it into the pot. The soup turns pink and creamy, the strawberry soup of childhood. Don't boil it after the cream goes in.
With other fruit
The same method for blueberries, currants, mirabelles or plums. Currants and cherries are sharp, so use 120 g sugar and half the lemon; blueberries are sweet and need the full lemon.
Served warm
In winter from frozen fruit, served hot with drop noodles or rice — then skip the chilling and serve straight after thickening.
