🇺🇸 Senate Bean Soup 🇺🇸
Today, March 30, 1940, we are dining at the United States Senate Office Building Restaurant. We choose a bowl of “Old-Fashioned Bean Soup” for 15 cents, a “Lettuce Salad” for 15 cents, “Iced Tea” for 5 cents, and a cup of “Coffee” before we go back to the office, for another 5 cents. The bill for our very pleasant luncheon in the Senate dining room is 40 cents each.
Bean soup has been a required and beloved menu tradition in Senate restaurants for well over a century. There are competing stories about the origin of the mandate that bean soup be served daily.
According to one story, the Senate’s bean soup tradition began early in the 20th century at the request of Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho, who as chair of the committee overseeing the Senate Restaurant, passed a resolution in the committee requiring that bean soup be on the menu daily.
Another story attributes the request to Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota, who expressed his fondness for the soup in 1903 and insisted that it be on the menu each day.
The name change from “Old-Fashioned Bean Soup” to “Senate Bean Soup” on the Senate menu occurred in 1977. This change was part of a broader update to the Senate restaurant’s offerings and menu presentation, aiming to modernize and capitalize on the soup’s long-standing popularity and association with the U.S. Senate.
There are two official recipes for Bean Soup on the government website senate.gov here. My recipe combines elements from both of them.
One includes mashed potatoes, celery, garlic, and parsley, the other does not. One includes butter, the other does not. One uses ham and a ham bone, the other uses smoked ham hocks.
In my recipe I add celery and garlic but do not include potatoes. And because we are fans of onion, celery, garlic and smoked ham, my recipe includes proportionally more of these ingredients than the originals. I also finish the soup with a sprinkling of parsley.
P.S. There are no carrots in Senate Bean Soup.
