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BEER SOUP (German method)
Simmer two quarts of mild beer (it should not be bitter) with the thin rind of a lemon, a few cloves, and a stick of cinnamon, sweeten with sugar, and add it through a sieve to the yolks of six well-beaten eggs and half a pint of cream. Whilst pouring into the tureen, stir it to a froth with a wire whisk. The beer should be very hot, without boiling, before it is stirred with the eggs. Serve hot with toast. Time, about half an hour to simmer. Probable cost, 9d. per quart. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A spiced beer custard, thickened with yolks and served as a hot soup. Everything depends on keeping the beer below boiling once the eggs go in.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks and cream are in, the mixture is a custard and will curdle above roughly 180F. Bring the spiced beer to steaming, take it off the heat, then pour it through the sieve onto the beaten yolks in a thin stream while whisking.
- Imperial measuresCassell's quart is 40 fl oz, so two quarts is about 2.4 US quarts. Half a pint of cream is 10 fl oz imperial, or about 1 1/4 US cups.
- What "mild beer" meansThe recipe only specifies that it should not be bitter: a malty, low-bitterness ale, such as a German Dunkles or Märzen. (Victorian "mild" primarily meant young, unaged ale rather than lightly hopped ale, though the two often overlapped.) Modern IPAs and heavily hopped lagers turn harsh when simmered and sweetened.
- The half hour of simmeringLong enough to infuse the lemon peel, cloves and cinnamon; the recipe gives no reduction target. Keep it at a bare tremble and covered, or you will lose a good deal of volume (and some alcohol will go off in the steam either way).
- Lemon rind"Thin rind" means the yellow zest only, pared with a peeler. Any white pith left on will make the soup bitter over half an hour of simmering.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. Start with about 3 tablespoons of sugar for the two quarts and adjust once the spices have infused.
- The frothWhisking hard as it goes into the tureen is what gives the dish its character — a cap of foam over the custard. It collapses within a few minutes, so whisk at the table or immediately before carrying it in.
- Yield and servingEight to ten as written. The recipe says only "serve hot with toast"; if you put the toast in the bowl rather than alongside, add it at the last moment so it does not go to pulp.
Biersuppe belongs to a long line of northern European hot-drink soups that predate coffee and tea as breakfast fare — beer being a keepable household liquid, and eggs and cream the way to turn it into something sustaining. Versions appear across German, Polish and Scandinavian cookery under names like Biersuppe and polewka piwna, generally spiced with cinnamon, cloves and lemon and eaten with bread or toasted crusts. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for a late-Victorian British readership with an appetite for Continental novelties, prints it as a curiosity flagged "German method," and costs it at 9d. a quart. The technique — hot liquid whisked into yolks and frothed at the moment of serving — is broadly of a piece with what lies behind zabaglione and, more loosely, posset, and marks the point where soup, custard and drink were not yet firmly separate things.