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Onion Soup, Maigre
Mince half a dozen medium-sized onions very finely. Put them into a stewpan over a gentle fire with three ounces of dissolved butter, dredge a little flour over them, and move them about until they are tender and lightly browned. Add two pints of boiling water, and a seasoning of salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg. Beat two eggs briskly for a minute or two, boil the soup, let it cool half a minute, then stir it in amongst the eggs, and serve immediately. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A fast-day soup built on three things only: onions, water and an egg liaison. The hinge is the eggs — once they go in, the soup must never see heat again.
- The egg finishBeat the eggs in a warmed bowl or tureen and pour the hot soup into them in a thin stream while whisking, rather than tipping eggs into the pan. The half-minute rest off the boil that the original specifies matters; liquid at a full boil will scramble them into threads.
- Do not reheatServe at once, as written. Returning the finished soup to the fire will curdle it, and there is no starch beyond the light flour dredge to hold it together.
- "Maigre"Means lean or meatless — the soup is deliberately made with water instead of stock for fast days. If you substitute chicken stock you have a different and less interesting dish; vegetable stock keeps the spirit of it.
- Two pintsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so two pints is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. Three ounces of "dissolved" (melted) butter is 6 tablespoons — generous, and it is what carries the flavour here.
- The flourA dredge means a light dusting, roughly a tablespoon over six onions. It is there to bind slightly, not to thicken into a soup base.
- Onion timingHalf an hour total is optimistic if you want real colour. Six minced onions over gentle heat need 25 to 35 minutes on their own to go soft and lightly gold; rushing them on high heat gives scorched edges and a raw, sharp broth.
- SeasoningGrated nutmeg was standard in Victorian white soups and is not optional decoration — it is most of what stands between this and hot onion water. Season the liquid before the eggs go in, since you cannot boil it afterwards to correct.
- YieldFour to five as a first course, in small cups. It is thin by design.
Maigre cookery — from the French for lean — filled the days of abstinence in the Christian calendar, when meat and meat stock were off the table but eggs, butter and dairy often were not. Cassell's printed maigre versions of the standard soups, partly for observant Catholic and Anglican households and partly because they were cheap: the sixpence quoted here would have had to cover onions, butter and two eggs, with water doing the work of stock. The egg liaison, beaten raw and finished with hot liquid off the heat, is one of the oldest thickeners in European cookery, older than roux, and survives in dishes from Greek avgolemono to the Roman stracciatella. Its weakness is the same everywhere: it will not tolerate a second boil, which is why so many nineteenth-century recipes end, as this one does, with the instruction to serve immediately.