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Rice and Onion Soup
Brown Soup.--Cut six onions into pieces the size and shape of dice, and fry them in butter until they are nicely browned. Pour over them as much stock as will cover them, and let them simmer gently till tender. Rub them through a sieve, add to the pulp two quarts of good stock, put the whole back into the stewpan, with four ounces of well-washed rice, and simmer all gently together until the rice is tender. Add salt and white pepper, and serve. In boiling the soup, be careful first to skim it thoroughly, and, after the fat is removed, to stir the soup frequently. The flavour of this soup may be pleasantly varied by frying four carrots, two turnips, six leeks, and a little root of parsley with the onions. White Soup.--Mix six chopped onions with four ounces of soaked rice. Boil the whole till tender in two quarts of veal or chicken broth; season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of powdered mace. When the soup is done enough, stir into it one-third of the quantity of boiling milk. Let it boil up, and it will be ready for serving. Time, one hour and a half to two hours. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
Two versions of the same soup, brown and white, printed as a pair so a cook could choose according to the rest of the menu. Neither is difficult, but the stated timings belong to an era of coarse-milled rice and slow ranges.
- The timing is the thingThe "one hour and a half to two hours" is printed at the close of the White Soup and covers softening the onions and cooking the rice through; it may apply to that recipe alone. Modern long-grain rice is tender in 18-20 minutes and will break down long before an hour, so add it once the onion base is ready and judge by the grain.
- Quantities in modern termsTwo quarts on the imperial measure is 80 fluid ounces, about 2.3 litres (on the US quart it would be 8 cups / 1.9 litres). Four ounces of rice is about 115 g, a generous half-cup by volume.
- The milk in the white soup"one-third of the quantity" means one-third of the soup's volume, so roughly 2.5 to 3 cups against two quarts of broth. Heat it separately, as directed, and add it boiling: cold milk into hot starchy soup drops the temperature and encourages curdling.
- SievingRubbing the fried onions through a sieve is the whole point of the brown version, and a blender or stick blender does it in seconds. If you want the silkiness the original implies, pass the puree through a fine sieve afterwards as well.
- Browning the onions"Nicely browned" means deep gold, not scorched. Any blackened edge will carry bitterness right through a sieved soup, where there is nothing to hide behind.
- Skimming and stirringThe instruction to skim first and then stir often is practical, not fussy. Rice starch settles and catches on the base of the pan, and once it scorches the flavour is unrecoverable.
- MacePowdered mace is still sold and is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself. A pinch is genuinely a pinch; it should not be identifiable in the finished soup.
- YieldSix to eight persons, as stated. The vegetable variation on the brown soup, with carrots, turnips, leeks and parsley root, will give a sweeter and thicker result.
Victorian cookery books commonly grouped soups as brown or white before grouping them by ingredient, and this page follows that habit by giving the same onion-and-rice base twice, once fried dark and sieved, once left pale and finished with milk. The white version belongs to the family of English white soups built on veal or chicken broth thickened with rice, almonds or breadcrumbs, of which soupe a la reine is the best-known relative; rice was the cheapest of those thickeners. The brown version is essentially a sieved onion puree, a technique the period applied to many vegetables in turn, the pulp worked through with a sieve and wooden spoon or a tammy.