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WHITE SOUP (another way) (Take a knuckle of veal two)
Take a knuckle of veal, two calf's feet, two anchovies, a slice of ham, two heads of celery, three onions, a few sweet herbs, a few pepper-corns, and one ounce of sweet almonds blanched and beaten fine. Stew all over a slow fire with the requisite quantity of water, taking off the scum as it rises. Strain the liquor off, and when put upon the fire next day to boil add to it two ounces of vermicelli. Just before it is sent to table, put in half a pint of cream, and give it a gentle boil.
A Georgian-Regency white soup in its plainest form: a long-stewed veal and calf's-foot broth, cleared and cooled overnight, then finished with almonds, vermicelli and cream. Almost all the work is in the stock, and the only delicate moment is the last two minutes.
- The hinge: the cream goes in off the boilThe hinge is the finish: the recipe's "gentle boil" means bringing the soup barely back to a tremble after the cream goes in, and serving at once. Cream boiled hard in a salty, gelatinous broth can curdle into threads, and a curdled soup is difficult to recover.
- Calf's feetThey are there for gelatine, not flavour, and give the soup its characteristic body and the cold jelly you will find the next morning. A butcher can usually order them; otherwise two split pig's trotters do the same job. Without either, the soup is thin broth with cream in it.
- Knuckle of vealThe shank end of the leg, bone in, a few pounds. Ask for it sawn into two or three pieces so the marrow and collagen come out. It should not be browned — this is a white soup, and colour in the pot means colour in the bowl.
- "The requisite quantity of water"The book leaves it to the cook: enough to cover the meat by an inch or two, topped up only if the bones become exposed. Keep it at a bare simmer for several hours rather than reducing hard, which would give glue.
- Anchovies and saltNo salt is listed; the anchovies and ham would have supplied much of it. Taste after straining and before the cream rather than during the stew, since the liquor concentrates as it cooks.
- Sweet herbsThe period shorthand for parsley, thyme and a bay leaf, sometimes with marjoram; tie them in a bundle for easy removal. "Sweet" here means savoury-aromatic, not sugared.
- Sweet almondsOrdinary blanched almonds; "sweet" distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which older cookery books also used but which are not wanted here. One ounce is a small handful; beat or grind them fine as directed, and expect a little thickening and richness rather than an obvious almond flavour.
- The overnight restThis is not optional fussiness. Chilling sets the fat in a solid cap you can lift off whole, which is the only practical way to get a clean white soup from a fatty veal stock. Lift the clear jelly off any sediment as well.
- VermicelliFine nest vermicelli, broken short, added to the reheating broth for the last 5-8 minutes. Two ounces in this quantity of liquid is a garnish, not a pasta soup; it will keep absorbing liquid if the soup stands.
- YieldA large potful, meant for a supper table rather than for two; the recipe itself gives no quantity of water and no number of servings.
White soup was a familiar first course at late-Georgian and Regency supper tables -- Jane Austen has Bingley promise a ball as soon as Nicholls "has made white soup enough," which suggests both that it fed a crowd and that it was not made in an afternoon. The grander version, often traced back to the French potage hickened with pounded almonds and sometimes egg yolks, a technique with medieval antecedents, where ground almonds did the work that cream and flour later took over. By the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary in the 1870s the dish had settled into the repertoire as a genteel survival: the almonds are reduced to a single ounce, and the vermicelli and cream carry most of the character.