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Cauliflower Soup
Cut large parboiled cauliflower into thick slices, also 2 large onions and heart of a stalk of celery. Fry these in hot Crisco. When done to a golden color, remove them from pan to drain. Have ready stewpan of chicken and veal stock, ready seasoned as for table, then place in slices of cauliflower, onions, and celery, and allow them to simmer until vegetables can be broken with 2 forks. Add to this 1 glass of Madeira wine. Pull stewpan aside, and stir in 2 beaten yolks of eggs, and enough cream to make whole thickness of rich cream. Let all simmer, but not boil. Send to table with small dice-shaped pieces of toast.
A vegetable soup finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, from a Crisco-sponsored menu book of the 1910s. Everything depends on the last two minutes.
- The hinge: never let it boil after the yolks go inOnce the beaten yolks and cream are stirred in, the soup must sit below a simmer — roughly 170–180F. A boil curdles the yolks into threads that no amount of whisking will smooth out. Pull the pan off the heat, temper a ladleful of hot stock into the yolks first, then return the mixture to the pot.
- "1 glass of Madeira"An imprecise period measure; a wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (1/4 cup), though the term was elastic. Start with less; Madeira in this quantity can dominate a delicate cauliflower base. Add it before the yolks and give it a few minutes to cook off its raw edge.
- CriscoThe book was published to promote Crisco, then newly on the market. Any neutral fat works; butter gives a better result here, though it browns faster, so keep the heat moderate while you colour the vegetables.
- ParboilingBreak the cauliflower into thick slabs through the core so the slices hold together, and boil 5–6 minutes in salted water before frying. Fried raw, it scorches at the edges long before the stem softens.
- Stock "ready seasoned as for table"Meaning stock already salted and seasoned to the point where you would happily drink it. A mixed chicken-and-veal stock was common in cookery of this period for the body the veal bones give; plain chicken stock is the practical substitute, and a low-sodium one lets you control the final salt.
- Doneness"Until vegetables can be broken with 2 forks" is roughly 20-30 minutes at a simmer. The original keeps the slices whole, so the soup arrives chunky rather than puréed.
- Cream quantityNo amount is given; "enough to make whole thickness of rich cream" means pouring-cream consistency. Add it gradually until it looks right.
- Yield and the toastThe recipe gives no yield and no stock quantity, so serving numbers are guesswork. The "dice-shaped pieces of toast" are croutons: cubed bread, fried or oven-crisped, sent to table with the soup.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s and 1920s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks what to do with a new product. Crisco, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening, was introduced in 1911 and needed persuading into kitchens that had used butter, lard and suet for generations, so recipe after recipe in the book calls for it, including ones like this where a French cook would have reached for butter. The soup itself is an old European form — vegetables sweated in fat, simmered in a meat stock, then bound at the last moment with egg yolks and cream, a liaison older than roux-thickened soups and still the classical finish for a velouté. The Madeira and the veal stock mark it as an ambitious dish for a domestic table; the fortified wine survived long shipping and kept well once opened, which made it a useful kitchen wine.