Asparagus Soup
Make a good strong stock of veal or beef, having about three quarts of stock to one bunch of asparagus. Boil until tender, strain and return to the fire, adding another bunch of asparagus, chopped very fine, and boil twenty minutes. Mix a cup of milk with a tablespoonful of flour; add to the soup. Let it come to a boil and serve. Season to taste with pepper and salt.
A two-stage asparagus soup: one bunch is cooked to exhaustion to flavour the stock and then discarded, a second goes in near the end for freshness. Two details in the original need attention.
- The strain is a discardAfter the first bunch has boiled tender, the instruction to "strain" means throwing the spent asparagus away — it has given up everything it has. If you would rather not waste it, press it through a sieve back into the pot for body, though the colour will be dull.
- Twenty minutes is too long for the second bunchFinely chopped asparagus is done in 4 to 6 minutes and turns olive-drab and stringy well before twenty. Add it late, cook briefly, and the soup keeps some green.
- Reduce the stockThree quarts of stock to one bunch is thin by modern taste. Simmer the first stage uncovered so the liquid reduces by a third before you strain; you will end with roughly two quarts of well-flavoured soup.
- The milk and flourA tablespoon of flour slaked in a cup of cold milk is a light thickener, not a cream soup. Whisk it smooth, add it in a stream while stirring, and give it a full two or three minutes at a simmer so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Woody endsAsparagus of the period was often sold thick and fibrous, and that may be part of why the first bunch is cooked to exhaustion, though the recipe gives no reason. Snap the tough ends off the second bunch and use only tips and tender stalk in the finishing stage.
- Veal stockVeal bones may have to be ordered from a butcher. A light beef stock or a good chicken stock does the same job; the point is body and mildness, not beefiness.
- YieldAs written, eight to twelve servings as a first course.
Asparagus soup belongs to a long line of nineteenth-century "green" soups built on a meat stock rather than a vegetable one — the vegetable supplies flavour and colour, the veal or beef supplies the substance. The double-bunch method here is a frugal version of a technique still used in restaurant kitchens: one batch of vegetable is sacrificed for depth, a second added late for brightness. Asparagus was a spring luxury with a short season. The thin milk-and-flour finish, rather than cream or egg yolks, suggests a household recipe aimed at ordinary kitchens rather than a French-influenced crème d'asperges.