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ONION SOUP (another way)
Peel and slice a dozen moderate-sized onions, and put them into a stewpan, with three pints of boiling stock (the liquid in which a leg of mutton has been boiled will answer very well for the purpose), two ounces of lean ham, finely minced, a large carrot, a large turnip, a small parsnip, a few of the outside sticks of a head of celery, a bunch of sweet herbs, a quarter of an ounce of white pepper, and a little salt. Simmer gently for one hour and a half, then press the soup with the vegetables through a hair-sieve, and when cold mix in the yolks of three well-beaten eggs, and half a pint of new milk. The soup may be stirred over the fire until quite hot, but it must not boil after the eggs and milk are added. If liked, this soup may be thickened with a table-spoonful of ground rice. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the stock.
A white onion soup finished with an egg-and-milk liaison rather than cheese and croûtes. Almost everything here works as written; the pepper and the reheating need attention.
- Do not let it boil after the liaisonOnce the yolks and milk go in, bring the soup back only to steaming, well below a simmer. A boil scrambles the yolks and the soup turns grainy and separated, and it is difficult to bring back.
- Temper the yolksThe instruction to add them when the soup is cold is one way of avoiding curdling, but it means reheating the whole pot slowly with constant stirring. Beating a ladleful of hot soup into the yolks and milk first, then returning that to the pan off the heat, is quicker and no riskier.
- Imperial measuresThree imperial pints is 60 fl oz, or about 7 US cups; the half pint of milk is 10 fl oz, a generous cup. Two ounces of ham is a thick slice.
- A quarter ounce of white pepperThat is roughly 7 g, about a tablespoon of ground pepper, which will dominate 7 cups of soup. Large pepper quantities are common in recipes of this kind; a teaspoon is closer to modern taste, and you can add more at the end.
- The stockMutton broth from a boiled leg is what the book assumes, and it gives the soup its character. Lamb stock is the nearest equivalent; a light chicken stock works but produces a milder, more anonymous soup.
- Hair sieveA horsehair sieve was the fine strainer of the period. A food mill or a blender followed by a pass through a fine-mesh sieve gives the same smooth result with far less work.
- New milk and ground rice"New milk" is fresh whole milk. "Ground rice" is rice flour, coarser than cornflour; slake the tablespoon in a little cold milk before stirring it in, or it will lump.
- YieldFive or six as a first course. The soup thickens as it stands and may need loosening with a little stock when reheated — again, without boiling.
Cassell's gives several onion soups, and this one belongs to the refined, sieved, cream-white tradition rather than the brown Parisian sort with toasted bread and cheese. The finish with egg yolks and milk is a liaison, a French technique long naturalised in English kitchens, used to enrich and lightly bind a soup without flour; the same trick underlies white soups of veal or almond found throughout nineteenth-century cookery. What is most characteristic of the book, though, is the opening suggestion that the liquor from a boiled leg of mutton "will answer very well": one imagines that Victorian household cookery rarely threw broth away, and the costing of one shilling exclusive of the stock makes the point that the stock was expected to be already in the house.