White House Cookbook Bean Soup

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The 1907 edition of The White House Cookbook is the oldest one I own. Someone has requested I share the Bean Soup recipe, therefore I am -- word for word as it appeared well over 100 years ago.

Put two quarts of dried white beans to soak the night before you make the soup, which should be put on as early in the day as possible.

Take two pounds of the lean of beef -- the course pieces will do. Cut them up and put them into your soup-pot, with the bones belonging to them (which should be broken into pieces), and a pound of lean bacon, cut very small. If you have the remains offa piece of beef that has been roasted the day before, and so much under-done that the juices remain in it, you may put it into the pot and its bones along with it. As soon as it boils, take off the scum, and put in the beans (having first drained them) and a head of celery cut small, or a tablespoonful of pounded celery seed. Boil it slowly till the meat is done to shreds, and the beans all dissolved. Then strain it through a colander into the tureen, and put into it small squares of toasted bread with the crust cut off.