Domenica Marchetti is a food writer, recipe developer and cooking teacher who specializes in seasonal Italian home cooking and the author of The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. Visit her website at www.domenicacooks.com. You can find more of her recipes here.

The first time I took my children to George Washington’s Mount Vernon they were quite young and, honestly, not all that interested in our first President, or Martha Washington, or the mansion. After a tour of the house, we headed over to the Mount Vernon Inn, on the grounds of the estate, for lunch.

I wasn’t expecting much from the Colonial-themed restaurant, with its faux-pewter mugs and costume-clad servers, whose garb reminded me more of my old Mrs. Beasley doll than of Colonial couture. But we had a delightful meal, and I fell in love with Virginia peanut soup.

If you travel to Virginia, you will almost certainly encounter peanut soup. It is a staple on menus at restaurants such as the Mount Vernon Inn and the Colonial taverns in Williamsburg.

Peanut soup made its first appearance in Colonial kitchens after the first African slaves arrived, and is believed to be based on West African ground-nut stews. The African-American scientist and peanut expert George Washington Carver, famous for developing 300 uses for the legume, created several recipes for peanut soup that involved combining the finely ground nuts with flour, milk and various seasonings.

The version I had, or at least my recollection of it was smooth and creamy, buttery and exceedingly rich, with a savory peanut flavor. That’s the version I sought to reproduce in my kitchen. It’s a simple recipe, with a little onion and celery, and a spoonful of tomato paste to add depth.

I use a mix of good-quality, organic smooth peanut butter and, for a little texture, coarse peanut butter made from freshly ground peanuts from my local health food store. This combination, I find, gives the soup a good, honest peanut flavor.

The sautéed apple and bacon garnish is completely optional and not at all traditional — most traditional recipes for peanut soup call for using chopped or crushed peanuts as a garnish. I feel the mound of slightly caramelized apple slices and crisp bacon bits adds not only bonus flavors and texture, but also visual interest to what, I have to admit, is a rather bland-colored soup. (If you want to lighten it a bit for spring, you can omit the sautéed apples and bacon and instead garnish the soup with a sprinkle of chopped scallions and crushed peanuts.)

Peanuts, and peanut butter, it should be noted, seem to have become risky ingredients of late, between the rising number of peanut allergies and, more recently, a major case of food contamination in which more than 500 people were sickened, and eight died, after eating peanut products from a Georgia processing plant that had been tainted with salmonella, leading to a massive peanut butter recall.

We have no peanut allergies in our house, but the latter incident did prompt me to ban from my pantry, for once and for all, highly processed commercial peanut butter. I’m sure the flavor of the soup is all the better for it.

Recipe: Virginia Peanut Soup (Domenica Marchetti)