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VERMICELLI (a la Reine)
Blanch the vermicelli in boiling water, drain it, and throw it into some rich consomme well seasoned. When done, a short time before serving thicken it with the yolks of eight eggs mixed with cream, and pour the vermicelli into the tureen for fear the thickening should get too much done, which would be the case if it remained on the corner of the stove.
A consommé finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, written for a cook who already knew the proportions. Everything hinges on keeping the thickened soup below simmering point.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks go in the soup must not exceed about 180F, or the eggs scramble and the broth turns grainy. Temper the yolk-and-cream mixture with a ladle or two of hot consommé before adding it back, and take the pan off the heat entirely.
- Why it goes into the tureenThe warning about the "corner of the stove" refers to the cooler edge of a coal range, where pots were parked to hold. The instruction is really: serve immediately, because residual heat will keep cooking the liaison in the pan.
- Missing quantitiesEight yolks is the only figure given. That is a liaison for roughly 2 to 2 1/2 quarts of consommé, with about 3/4 cup of cream; for a smaller pot scale down proportionally. Vermicelli is unspecified — 4 to 5 oz for that volume gives a soup rather than a porridge.
- Blanching the vermicelliBoiling it separately and draining removes surface starch so the finished consommé stays clear. Give it about half the packet time; it finishes in the broth.
- Consommé"Rich consommé" means a clarified, well-reduced stock with real body, not canned broth. If using a commercial stock, reduce it and check the seasoning before the liaison goes in, since you cannot correct salt easily afterwards.
- "A la reine"In this period the term generally points to poultry: a soup built on or garnished with white chicken meat, enriched with cream and frequently with egg yolks. Adding a little cooked chicken breast, finely shredded, would be in keeping.
- YieldAs scaled above, six to eight portions as a first course. It does not reheat — the liaison breaks — so make only what will be served.
The dish demonstrates a technique: the liaison, thickening a clear broth with egg yolks and cream at the last moment. The suffix à la reine, "in the queen's manner," was applied liberally in nineteenth-century French and Anglo-French kitchens to dishes made rich and pale with cream, eggs and white poultry meat; various queens have been proposed as its origin, but no single attribution is secure. Vermicelli -- Italian for "little worms" -- reached British kitchens as a dried imported pasta well before the nineteenth century and was used chiefly as a garnish for clear soups, sold by grocers in long coiled skeins. The nervous tone of the final clause is a reminder of what cooking on a coal range involved: there was no off switch, only hotter and cooler parts of the stove top, and a delicate egg thickening left standing anywhere on it would curdle.