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Vermicelli Soup, White
Take two or three pints of white stock seasoned with salt, cayenne, and pounded mace, and flavoured with a turnip, a carrot, an onion, and a bunch of parsley. Put the crumb of a French roll in as much of the liquor as it will absorb, let it simmer till it is quite soft, and beat it smooth with the back of a wooden spoon. Stir it into the soup, boil for a quarter of an hour, and add half a pint of boiling cream. Blanch two ounces of vermicelli by boiling it in water for five minutes, drain it, put it into fresh water, and boil till it is tender. Put it into a tureen, pour the boiling soup upon it, and serve very hot. If cream is not to be had, the yolk of an egg and half a pint of milk may be used instead. Stir the boiling milk into the soup, beat the egg in the tureen, mix a little of the soup with it, then add the rest. Put in the vermicelli, and serve. Time, twelve to twenty minutes to boil the vermicelli. Sufficient for five or seven persons.
A white stock soup thickened with bread and enriched with cream — an older style of "white soup" that predates roux-and-flour purées. The instructions are workable as written; a few conventions need translating.
- The hinge: keep it whiteNothing here should colour, so keep the stock pale and the vegetables unbrowned. Note that the original does direct boiling cream, and boiling soup poured over the vermicelli; modern practice is to hold the soup below a simmer once cream or egg goes in, since boiled cream can separate and boiled egg yolk curdles into threads.
- White stockA pale unroasted stock from veal or chicken bones with no browned aromatics. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced.
- MeasuresTwo to three imperial pints is roughly 5 to 7 US cups; half an imperial pint of cream is about 1 1/4 cups. Two ounces of vermicelli is a little under 60 g.
- The French rollA small soft white bread roll, close to a modern dinner roll. Use the crumb from one roll — about 1 to 1½ cups torn, loosely packed — and discard the crust. Stale bread absorbs more evenly than fresh.
- Pounded maceGround mace, the outer covering of nutmeg. A quarter teaspoon is plenty; it is a strong, slightly resinous spice and easy to overdo.
- Vermicelli, twice cookedThe blanch-then-fresh-water method was probably intended to rinse off loose starch and any dustiness from storage so the soup stayed clear and white, though the recipe does not say. Modern dried vermicelli needs only one cooking, to just tender, and it will keep absorbing liquid in the tureen -- cook it a shade under.
- The egg versionTempering the yolk in the tureen with a little hot soup before adding the rest is the correct technique and should not be skipped. Note that the yolk in this version is only warmed through, not properly cooked, which matters if you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg.
- BlendingBeating the bread smooth with a wooden spoon is the period method; an immersion blender or a pass through a sieve gives a cleaner texture in less time.
- YieldThe recipe says five to seven persons. At the top of the range (three pints plus cream) that is a fair first-course portion; at two pints it will stretch thin, so four to five bowls is the safer count.
"White soup" was a fixture of English genteel dining from the eighteenth century onward — the dish Jane Austen's Mr. Bingley must lay in a store of before he can give a ball — and it was defined by what it lacked as much as what it held: no browning, no dark stock, no visible colour. Thickening with bread crumb rather than flour is the older method, inherited from medieval and early modern practice where bread did the work later given to roux and, still later, to cream and egg alone. Vermicelli, the thin dried Italian pasta whose name means "little worms," reached British kitchens as an imported luxury in the eighteenth century and was sold by grocers and confectioners; recipes routinely instruct the cook to blanch it first, a sensible precaution for a shop-bought dried good of uncertain age. Cassell's gives the recipe an alternative ending — cream "if to be had" and otherwise milk and a yolk.