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Rice Soup, Superior
Wash well four ounces of rice, and boil it in two quarts of veal stock till tender, drain it, and put the stock with half the rice back into the stewpan, rub the rest through a fine sieve, then stir it into the soup, and let it boil up. Beat the yolks of three eggs with half a pint of cream, take the soup off the fire for two minutes, then add the eggs and cream gradually, and stir the soup unceasingly for three or four minutes until it is thoroughly hot, but it must not boil again or the eggs will curdle. Time, two hours. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A classic velouté-style rice soup finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. Everything hinges on the last three minutes: once the yolks go in, the soup must stay below a simmer.
- The hinge: never boil after the liaisonDiluted with stock and cream, the yolks thicken rather than set at once, but a simmer will curdle them: keep the soup steaming, with no bubbles breaking the surface. If it boils, the yolks scramble into threads and no amount of stirring will bring them back.
- Temper the eggsThe instruction to take the pan off the heat for two minutes and add the mixture "gradually" is a tempering step. Whisk a ladleful of hot soup into the yolks and cream first, then pour that back into the pan in a thin stream, stirring constantly.
- MeasuresFour ounces of rice is about two-thirds of a cup. The measures are imperial: two quarts is nearer ten US cups than eight, and "half a pint of cream" is an imperial half-pint, 10 fl oz, or a generous US cup.
- Veal stockVeal bones are a special order at most butchers now. A light chicken stock is the usual stand-in and gives the same pale, neutral body; avoid dark beef stock, which will overwhelm the cream and turn the soup grey-brown.
- The two puréesRubbing half the cooked rice through a sieve is what thickens the soup. A blender or stick blender does it in seconds, though the texture is slightly gluier — pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the smoothness the original intends.
- Rice choice and timingA short or medium grain releases more starch and thickens better than long grain. It will be tender in 18-20 minutes, not two hours; the stated time probably takes in the stock as well.
- Season at the endThe recipe gives no salt, on the assumption that the stock is already seasoned. Taste after the cream goes in, when the dairy has flattened the seasoning, and correct then with salt and a little white pepper or nutmeg.
- Yield and reheatingEight to ten as a first course, four to five as a main. Leftovers reheat only gently over low heat or in a bain-marie; a hard reheat will split the liaison.
Rice soups thickened with a pounded or sieved portion of their own grain run right through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery, where rice was one of several thickeners for a white soup, alongside bread and, later, roux and cornflour. The finish here — yolks beaten with cream, stirred in off the boil — is the liaison, among the older sauce thickenings and one of the easiest to bungle, which is why Cassell's spells out the warning about curdling. Calling the soup "superior" most likely distinguishes it from a plainer version made with water or a thin broth and no eggs; the veal stock, cream and three yolks mark it as a dish for a dinner with guests. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is an enormous alphabetical compendium of the late Victorian period, and often carried more than one grade of the same soup so that a household could cook to its means.