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Herb Soup
Take a handful each of chervil, parsley, spinach, and sorrel, and half a dozen young cabbage lettuces. Wash, drain, and shred them finely, and put them into a stewpan, with four ounces of butter, two or three sliced carrots, and a little pepper and salt. Let them steam for half an hour, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent burning. Pour in three quarts of clear soup, and simmer for twenty minutes. Add a little grated nutmeg. Strain the soup, beat the yolks of three eggs with half a pint of milk, and stir it in gently just before serving. This soup may be varied by the addition of a quart of green peas, a cucumber cut into slices and fried in butter, or a few onions. When peas are put in, however, the sorrel should be omitted. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per quart. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A Victorian spring soup built on a stewed herb base, a stock, and an egg-and-milk liaison at the finish. The liaison is where it succeeds or curdles.
- Never boil after the eggs go inThree yolks beaten with half a pint of milk will scramble the moment the soup returns to a simmer. Take the pan off the heat, temper the yolk mixture with a ladle of hot soup, stir it back in, and serve immediately; hold it below about 175F.
- "Clear soup" means clarified stock"Clear soup" means a clarified broth — veal, beef or chicken — not water. Three imperial quarts is roughly 14 US cups, so a well-flavoured unsalted stock is the whole backbone of the dish.
- QuantitiesFour ounces of butter is one US stick. The book's half-pint is imperial, 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 US cups. A "handful" of each herb is a loosely packed bunch.
- Cabbage lettuceThis is the old name for any round, heading lettuce — butterhead or a small green iceberg both work. Six heads sounds extravagant until you see how far shredded lettuce cooks down.
- Sorrel and the pea variationSorrel brings a sharp acidity, and acid plus milk plus heat is how liaisons split, so add the milk off the heat. The book directs that the sorrel be omitted when peas go in, but gives no reason for it.
- The half-hour sweatSteaming the greens in butter under cover with the carrots is a slow melt, not a browning. Keep the heat low and the lid on; scorched sorrel and lettuce turn the finished soup bitter.
- StrainingAs written the vegetables are discarded and only the flavoured broth is served — a very Victorian result. Passing the whole thing through a blender first, then a sieve, gives a fuller soup with the same character.
- Yield and costSeven or eight servings, as stated. "1s. 6d. per quart" is eighteen pence in pre-decimal money, a costing figure for a household ordering to a budget rather than anything to convert.
Herb soups of this kind descend from the French potage aux herbes, a spring dish made when chervil, sorrel and young lettuce came in together and before the heavier summer vegetables arrived. Sorrel in particular was a standard kitchen-garden plant in Britain into the nineteenth century and has largely dropped out of shops since, which is why the recipe reads as unfamiliar now. The finishing of a soup with beaten yolks and milk — a liaison — was the ordinary Victorian way of giving body without flour. The costing in shillings and pence, given per quart rather than per recipe, is a reminder that these dictionaries were written for households running a kitchen to a weekly account.