Lima-Style Chupe (Chúpe Limeño)

History

A chupe is a potato-based chowder-stew, and this Lima version runs the family's classic course: onions softened in butter with a little garlic and oregano, peeled potatoes simmered in that sauce until tender, the broth then loosened with as much milk as you like and enriched with a piece of fresh cheese, an egg cracked in for every diner, fried boneless fish, and two dried toasted ajíes (Andean chilies) that the contributor says give it an exquisite taste. The dish belongs to a documented South American family of stews "generally made with... fish, shrimp, crayfish or shellfish," typical "more specifically to the cuisines of Bolivia, Chile and Peru". Its very method is canonical: a standard chupe is built by "cooking potatoes and onions in butter, then adding various spices," and "before serving the broth, it is mixed with milk or cream" — nearly the exact sequence given here. The name is Andean at root: Spanish borrowed the word "from Quechua chupi", and Quechua chupi means simply "soup". The potato and ají sit on the Indigenous side of this kitchen; the milk, cheese, egg, onion and butter are the criollo layer the Spanish added over an Andean base.

Mercedes C. de Irigoyen of Lima frames the dish as home food rather than a showpiece, offering it as a plate of her family's own cooking in place of the desserts and confections she assumed the collection wanted, and expecting that limeños would recall the family table at its aroma alone; the text names it Lima's own and notes it is served only at lunch. What the encyclopedic record does not settle is how distinctively Limeño the cheese-and-per-diner-egg enrichment is — the general definitions name milk or cream but not those additions — nor which ají variety is meant, nor the year the recipe was set down (the book is 1890; the contribution itself is undated). The recipe's own rule is the surest guide to its character: the first condition of a chupe is that it have plenty of broth.

Ingredients

• butter
• onions, chopped
• garlic, ground
• oregano
• salt
• 1 small cup water
• potatoes, peeled
• milk
• fresh cheese, chopped
• eggs
• fish, scaled and boned, fried
• 2 dried ajíes (Andean chilies), toasted

Instructions

1. Fry chopped onions in butter with very little ground garlic, a little oregano, and salt.
2. Add a small cup of water; when boiling, add peeled potatoes until lightly cooked.
3. Pour in milk to taste and boil until the potatoes are done, then add chopped fresh cheese and crack in one egg per diner.
4. Separately fry scaled, boned fish and add to the chupe, along with two dried toasted ajíes for flavor.
5. Keep it soupy—add more milk if it reduces—and serve only at lunch.