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SPRING-HERBS SOUP (excellent for purifying the blood)
Shred finely a handful of young dandelion leave, and the same quantity of chervil and purslain, together with five or six sorrel leaves and two cabbage lettuces. Wash them well, then drain them, and steam them in a closely-covered saucepan with a little pepper and salt and an ounce of fresh butter. In ten minutes dredge a table-spoonful of flour upon them, and add a pint and a half of white stock. Let the soup simmer gently for a quarter of an hour, and keep stirring it during that time. Strain into it half a pint of boiling milk, and add a tea-spoonful of powdered white sugar. Put the yolks of two eggs into the soup-tureen. Beat them with a spoonful of the soup, which, though thoroughly hot, must not be quite boiling; add the rest of the soup gradually, and serve immediately. If preferred, cream may be used instead of milk. Time, about an hour, exclusive of the time consumed in preparing the stock. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A spring soup built on a butter sweat, a flour thickening and an egg-yolk liaison finished in the tureen. Nothing here is difficult, but the last step is unforgiving.
- The hinge: the egg yolksThe soup must be hot but below a simmer when it meets the yolks, and it is never returned to the heat afterwards. Beat a spoonful in first as directed, then add the rest in a slow stream; if the pan is boiling you will get threads of cooked egg rather than a smooth, faintly thickened soup.
- "Steam them in a closely-covered saucepan"This means sweating the greens in butter over low heat with only their own moisture — no water is added. Ten minutes is enough for them to collapse entirely.
- White stockA pale, unbrowned veal or chicken stock, unsalted or lightly salted. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will muddy both colour and flavour.
- Cabbage lettucesThe old term for heading lettuces, as opposed to cos; a soft butterhead is the closest common match today. Two heads sounds like a great deal but they cook down to very little.
- Purslain and chervilPurslain is purslane, a fleshy-leaved succulent green sold in farmers' markets and Middle Eastern and Mexican groceries; it is slightly mucilaginous and helps body the soup. Chervil is delicate and short-lived — buy it the same day. If either is unavailable, more sorrel and lettuce with a little parsley gets close.
- Dandelion and sorrelUse young leaves only; older dandelion turns aggressively bitter. Sorrel is sharply acidic and can curdle milk, so watch the soup when the milk goes in. Sorrel is high in oxalic acid, so this is not a soup to eat in quantity if you are prone to kidney stones.
- ForagingIf you gather dandelion rather than buy it, take it from ground you know has not been sprayed or used by dogs, and identify it with confidence — several yellow-flowered composites look similar at leaf stage.
- Measures and quantitiesA pint and a half of stock is 3 cups (US pints) and the half pint of milk 1 cup; if you are working from the British imperial pint the book assumes, that is about 30 fl oz and 10 fl oz. A tablespoon of flour to that much liquid gives a soup barely thicker than the stock, which is the intention.
- Yield and timingFour to five servings as a first course; the book allows about an hour once the stock is made. Serve immediately -- it will not hold, reheat or freeze.
The subtitle is the period speaking: spring greens were widely held to "purify the blood" after a winter of salt meat, root vegetables and little fresh produce, and bitter leaves in particular were credited with acting on the liver and kidneys. Dandelion, sorrel, chervil and purslane were all standard kitchen-garden or hedgerow plants in nineteenth-century Britain, and a soup of this kind belongs to the same seasonal tradition as French soupe aux herbes and the various spring tonics and "green broths" that appear across European cookery. The finish — yolks beaten in the tureen off the heat — is a classic liaison of the kind English domestic cookery took from French practice. Purslane's near-disappearance from British greengrocers, and chervil's, is the main reason the dish now reads as exotic when it was once simply what the garden had to offer in April.