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Gravy Soup, with Vermicelli
Take two quarts of clear brown gravy soup (see GRAVY, BROWN, SOUP). Let it boil, then drop into it, very gradually, three ounces of fresh vermicelli. If long kept, the soup will be quite spoilt. The vermicelli should be rubbed between the fingers, and dropped in with one hand, whilst the soup is being stirred with the other to prevent any lumps forming. Simmer gently until it is thick and soft, and serve with a French roll in the tureen. A plateful of grated Parmesan cheese should be sent to table with the soup. The usual plan is to soak the vermicelli in boiling water for a few minutes, drain and cool it in a colander, then simmer it gently for five or six minutes, stirring frequently to prevent it getting into lumps. Time, from twenty to thirty minutes to boil the vermicelli. Probable cost, vermicelli, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A finishing method rather than a soup in its own right: everything depends on the brown gravy stock made elsewhere in the book. The one thing to change is the timing.
- The timing is the hingeTwenty to thirty minutes will reduce modern dried vermicelli to paste. Nests of fine wheat vermicelli need three to five minutes in simmering stock; taste at three. The book's own "usual plan" of a brief soak and five or six minutes' simmer is much closer to right.
- Which vermicelliThis means fine threads of dried durum wheat pasta, the Italian kind, not the translucent rice or mung bean noodles sold under the same name. Capellini broken short works if you cannot find vermicelli nests.
- "If long kept, the soup will be quite spoilt"Read against "fresh vermicelli" immediately before it, the warning most likely concerns the vermicelli rather than the finished soup. Pasta was often sold loose by the pound and could go stale or dusty. Modern packaged pasta keeps well, so the caution matters much less.
- QuantitiesTwo imperial quarts is about 2.3 litres, roughly 2.4 US quarts. Three ounces is 85 g of dry pasta, which is light for that volume of liquid; the intent is a broth carrying noodles, not a thick pasta soup.
- Rubbing between the fingersBreaking the strands as they go in and stirring continuously is genuinely worth doing. Vermicelli dropped in a clump will fuse in hot starch-thickened stock.
- The French rollA small white roll, split or whole, put in the tureen to soak. Any plain roll serves; period French rolls are unsweetened, though recipes for them often include milk, butter or egg.
- YieldSix to eight as a first course, going by the original. As a main course it will stretch to four at most, and you would want more pasta.
Vermicelli reached English kitchens well before Italian food did, arriving in the eighteenth century as a dried commodity sold by grocers and Italian warehousemen alongside macaroni and Parmesan. By Cassell's day it had been thoroughly domesticated as a soup garnish: a clear brown stock with a handful of pasta, with the Parmesan sent round separately. The instruction to place a French roll in the tureen belongs to an older tradition still, in which soup was thickened and bulked with bread at the table, a habit visible in the word soup itself, from the sop of bread the liquid was poured over.