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Princes' Soup
Take half a dozen turnips, and with a vegetable cutter cut them into small balls the size of a marble. Put them into a stewpan with as much clear veal stock as will cover them, and let them simmer till tender; then pour over them a pint and a half of additional stock, clear and bright, let it boil, and pour it into the tureen. Cut from a stale loaf a slice or two less than a quarter of an inch thick. Have these cut in rounds about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Throw them into a saute-pan with about an ounce of butter, and shake them over the fire till they are brightly browned. Drain from the fat, and place them on blotting-paper to absorb the grease. Send the crusts to table with the soup, and serve them either on a separate dish or in the tureen. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost of turnips, 4d. to 6d. a bunch. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A clear consommé garnished with turned turnip balls and fried bread croûtons. Almost everything depends on the stock, since there is nothing else to hide behind.
- QuantitiesA pint and a half in an English book of this date is 30 fl oz, roughly 850 ml. With the stock used to cook the turnips you will end up with a little over a litre, which matches the stated three or four servings as a first course.
- The stock is the recipe"Clear and bright" veal stock means a properly skimmed, unclouded broth, ideally clarified with egg white and lightly seasoned. Commercial stock cubes will produce something cloudy and salty; a homemade veal or light chicken stock, strained through muslin and chilled so the fat can be lifted off, is what the recipe assumes.
- Vegetable cutterThe tool meant is a small ball cutter, what we call a Parisienne scoop or melon baller, about 15-20 mm across. Failing that, cut the turnips into rough cubes and turn the corners off with a paring knife.
- TurnipsSmall white turnips, not swede. Six of them is a lot of trimming waste for the amount of soup, so expect to use the offcuts elsewhere. Simmer only until a knife goes through cleanly, 8-12 minutes; overcooked balls collapse and cloud the broth.
- Cook the turnips separatelyThey are simmered in just enough stock to cover, then the rest of the clear stock is added at the end. This keeps the finished soup bright, since any cloudiness or scum stays in the smaller quantity. Skim before combining.
- CroûtonsSlices a little under a quarter inch is about 5 mm, cut into 2 cm rounds. An ounce of butter is 30 g, and it browns fast, so keep the pan moving and pull them the moment they colour. "Blotting-paper" means kitchen paper.
- The stated timeAn hour and a half presumably takes in the making and clarifying of the stock. Once you have good stock in hand, the soup itself takes about twenty minutes.
- ServingSend the croûtons to the table separately rather than floating them in the tureen, unless they go in at the last second; five minutes in hot broth turns them to paste.
Cassell's reads as a lesson in clear soups: a single vegetable garnish, cut to a uniform shape, floating in a broth whose whole merit is transparency. Names like "Princes' Soup" were common in Victorian menu French and English alike, where a grand title signalled refinement rather than any particular court or occasion; the French repertoire has dozens of similarly aspirational consomm ames are are the point of the dish. A cook who could produce identical spheres from a bunch of cheap turnips was demonstrating exactly the kind of skilled labour that separated a professional kitchen from a family one, and the vegetable scoop seems to have been a familiar piece of late nineteenth-century batterie de cuisine for this purpose.