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Clear Soup, with Poached Eggs
Poach an egg carefully and lightly, trim the edges neatly. Place it in a hot soup plate, and pour a breakfast-cupful of clear soup gently over it. A little chopped parsley or chervil may be sprinkled in at the last moment. An excellent invalid dish. Probable cost, 4d.
A one-portion assembly rather than a recipe to cook, and it lives or dies on the quality of the consommé and the neatness of the egg.
- Breakfast-cupfulA Victorian breakfast cup holds rather more than a teacup: reckon 8-10 fl oz, or a generous cup. That is a single serving, and the recipe makes one plate.
- "Clear soup"Cassell's means consommé — a stock clarified with egg white and lean minced beef until it is bright and free of fat. A well-made unclarified stock will taste right but look cloudy, which defeats the point of the dish.
- The hinge: temperatureThe soup must be very hot and the plate hot, because nothing is cooked after assembly. Heat the plate in the oven or with boiling water, ladle the soup straight from a simmer, and serve at once.
- Poaching lightly"Lightly" here presumably means a set white and a still-liquid yolk, roughly 2-3 minutes in barely trembling water; a splash of vinegar helps the white hold together. The soft yolk will run into the soup when it is cut.
- TrimmingLift the egg onto a cloth or kitchen paper to drain, then cut away the ragged skirt of white with a small knife or the edge of a round cutter. Untrimmed whites shred and cloud the consommé.
- ChervilStill worth seeking out — anise-scented and much softer than parsley, but it loses its flavour with heat, hence "at the last moment." Flat-leaf parsley is the usual stand-in.
- Probable cost, 4dFourpence, in late nineteenth-century terms, is low enough to suggest the soup was assumed to be already in the house rather than costed from scratch.
- Raw yolkThe yolk stays soft, so this is not a dish for anyone who should avoid undercooked egg — the very invalids and convalescents the original recommends it for. Use pasteurised-in-shell eggs if that is a concern.
This belongs to the large Victorian category of invalid cookery, which occupied whole chapters of household manuals at a time when convalescence happened at home and the sickroom tray was the cook's responsibility. Clear soup was thought to be nourishing yet undemanding, and an egg was the standard way of making it substantial without making it heavy — the same logic that produced beef tea, arrowroot and calf's-foot jelly. The dish is also a thrifty cousin of the Italian zuppa alla pavese, in which egg meets hot broth in the plate rather than the pan. It is offered less as a composed dish than as a demonstration of what a properly clarified stock can carry on its own.