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Rice-Flour Soup
Mix a quarter of a pound of rice-flour very smoothly with a cupful of nicely-seasoned veal stock. Pour over it a quart of the same stock boiling hot, and stir the soup over the fire for ten minutes after it boils. A quarter of a pint of cream or milk may be added, if liked. When the cream is omitted, the addition of a dessert-spoonful of curry-powder and a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice will improve this soup to the taste of many. Time, ten minutes to boil after the rice-flour is added.
A thickened white soup of the kind Victorian kitchens turned out from whatever stock was on hand. The whole thing hinges on the cold slurry: rice flour dropped straight into boiling liquid will seize into lumps that no amount of stirring will break up.
- Slake the flour firstMix the rice flour to a smooth, pourable cream with the cupful of cold or barely warm stock and make sure no dry pockets remain before the boiling stock goes in. Pour the hot stock in a thin stream while whisking, not all at once.
- Imperial measuresA quart here is the imperial quart, 40 fl oz or about 1.14 litres. A quarter of a pint of cream is 5 fl oz, roughly 150 ml. A dessertspoon is about 2 teaspoons.
- Rice flour, not sweet rice flourUse plain white rice flour. Glutinous or "sweet" rice flour (mochiko) behaves quite differently and will give a stretchy, gluey body.
- The ratio is thickFour ounces of rice flour to a quart of stock (plus the cupful used for the slurry) will give a notably thick soup, closer to a pouring sauce than most modern soups. Two to three ounces is likely to suit present-day expectations better; hold back some of the flour and judge it as it thickens.
- Veal stockVeal stock is uncommon in home kitchens today; a light, unsalted chicken stock is the nearest thing, while a beef stock will dominate the delicate flavour the recipe is aiming at. "Nicely-seasoned" matters because the stock carries the seasoning: apart from the optional curry powder and lemon juice, nothing else is added.
- Ten minutes of stirring means itRice flour needs the full boil to lose its raw, chalky taste, and it will catch on the bottom of the pan if left alone. Use a heavy pan and a whisk or flat wooden spatula, and keep the heat moderate.
- Cream and curry are alternativesAdd cream or milk off the boil and do not let it return to a hard boil afterwards. If you take the curry route instead, cook the powder briefly in a little butter before whisking it in, or it tastes raw; the lemon juice goes in at the very end.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; roughly 1.4 litres, or about four to six first-course servings.
Rice flour was a standard thickener in nineteenth-century English kitchens, sold by grocers alongside arrowroot, sago and ground tapioca, and valued because it gave body without the flavour of a flour-and-butter roux and without the risk of curdling that came with egg yolks. It belongs to the plainer end of the thickened white soups, a family that runs from elaborate almond and cream potages down to thrifty everyday versions like this one, whose purpose was to turn a pot of leftover stock into something that could be sent to table. The optional curry powder and lemon juice reflect late Victorian taste: commercial curry powders were widely available in Britain by then, and cookery writers sometimes offered them as a way to lift an otherwise bland soup for diners who wanted more assertive flavour.