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Russian Soup
Take about two quarts of good brown soup nicely flavoured, and pour this, when ready for serving, into the tureen over three ounces of cooked ham finely shredded, and some small sausages already fried and drained thoroughly from fat. The soup may be made as follows. Chop two Spanish onions, and mix with them the whole heart of a cabbage finely shredded. Fry the mixture in a little butter till the vegetables are lightly browned, dredge two ounces of flour over them, and moisten the paste with about three pints of good stock. Add a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg; let the soup boil once, then draw the saucepan to the side, and let its contents simmer for half an hour or more, carefully removing the scum as it rises. Add a glassful of light wine and a spoonful of coarsely-shredded tarragon or chervil, and the soup will be ready for serving. Time, about an hour. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A cabbage-and-onion broth thickened lightly with flour, finished with wine and herbs, and garnished with ham and sausage in the tureen. The garnish is the point of the dish, so treat it as part of the recipe rather than a flourish.
- "Good brown soup"A stock-based soup built on browned bones and vegetables; period brown soups were variously left thin or thickened with browned flour, and the version supplied in the second half of this entry is itself flour-dredged. A well-flavoured beef or veal stock stands in.
- VolumesThe figures do not reconcile: three pints of stock (imperial, so about 7 cups) is less than the two quarts of finished soup the entry calls for, so the stated yield is not a reduction of the stock alone. A "glassful" of light wine in this period means a wineglassful, conventionally about 2 fl oz -- a dry white or a light red.
- Flour to liquidTwo ounces of flour (about 1/2 cup) to 6 cups of stock gives a barely-bodied soup, which is intended. Dredge it over the hot vegetables and let it cook a minute or two before the stock goes in, or the finished soup tastes pasty.
- Spanish onionsLarge, mild, pale-skinned onions - two of them is a substantial amount, around 1 1/2 lb. Ordinary yellow onions work but are sharper, so brown them a little longer.
- "Whole heart of a cabbage"The dense pale centre, outer leaves discarded: figure the inner half of a medium white or Savoy cabbage, finely shredded. Using the whole head makes the soup coarse and sulphurous.
- The sausagesSmall means small - chipolatas, cocktail sausages, or a coarse pork sausage twisted into short lengths. Fry them fully and drain them well on paper, since any fat carried over will slick the surface of the soup.
- Skimming and the simmerOnce the flour is in, keep the pot at a bare tremble off to one side of the heat and skim persistently. A flour-thickened soup held at a rolling boil traps scum and starch together and turns cloudy.
- Herbs lastTarragon or chervil goes in at the end, off the boil. Both lose their aroma within a couple of minutes of hard heat, and tarragon in particular turns bitter.
- AssemblyWarm the tureen, put the shredded ham and drained sausages in it, and pour the hot soup over. Serves six to eight as a first course.
Nineteenth-century English cookery books were fond of attaching national labels to soups on the strength of a single ingredient or garnish, and "Russian" here signals the cabbage - the sweet-sour cabbage soups of the Russian and Polish table, shchi and its relations, are the likeliest point of reference, even though here the defining sour note of kvass, brine or fermented cabbage is missing entirely. What remains is a wine-finished brown broth with a Russian gesture in the vegetables and a garnish of ham and sausage. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery ran hundreds of such entries; the tureen service, the shredded ham laid in the bottom, and the yield stated for six or eight all belong to a dinner served in courses by a servant, with the soup poured over its garnish at the last moment so the sausages arrive whole rather than stewed to pieces.