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Wine Soups
Wine soups, made of light German wine, are very common throughout Germany. They are very quickly made. Two or three recipes are given. No. 1. Dissolve an ounce of butter in a saucepan, stir into it briskly a tablespoonful of flour, and beat the paste over the fire till it acquires a little colour. Stir into it half a pint of water, and add the thin rind and strained juice of half a fresh lemon, half a stick of cinnamon, three table-spoonfuls of sugar, and a small bottle of light wine. Simmer the soup for ten minutes, break three eggs into the tureen, and froth them lightly. Mix them with a spoonful of the soup. Add the rest gradually, and serve. No. 2. Boil two ounces of best rice and the thin rind of half a lemon in three-quarters of a pint of water. When the rice is tender, mix with it gradually a small bottle of wine, and add as much white sugar as will sweeten it pleasantly. Break two eggs into the tureen, mix with them a spoonful of the soup, and serve. No. 3. Cut a large fresh lemon into thin slices, carefully removing the seeds. Put the lemon into a tureen, cover with powdered white sugar, and add a tea-cupful of grated bread-crumbs which have been browned in butter. Mix a pint of wine with half a pint of water. Sweeten the mixture, and bring it to the point of boiling. Pour it upon the slices of lemon, etc., let them soak for five minutes, and serve. Send small sponge-cakes to table as an accompaniment.
Three versions of German Weinsuppe, all of them essentially warm wine custards served in a tureen. The critical point is the egg finish: once the eggs are in, the soup must not go back on the heat or it will scramble.
- Temper, do not cookIn Nos. 1 and 2 the beaten eggs stay in the tureen and the hot soup is added a spoonful at a time to warm them through. Add it too fast, or return the mixture to the pan, and you get sweet scrambled egg in wine.
- "A small bottle of light wine"Genuinely imprecise, and the book gives no capacity. A modern half-bottle, 375 ml (about 1 1/2 cups), is a workable reading. "Light German wine" points to a low-alcohol Mosel or Rhine white rather than anything heavy or oaked, especially as the soup is sweetened further.
- Raw eggThe eggs are warmed but never held at a safe temperature, and the finished soup is served immediately. Use pasteurised eggs, and skip the dish entirely for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- The roux in No. 1An ounce of butter to a tablespoon of flour is a loose roux. "A little colour" means blond, not brown -- a minute or two of stirring. Add the half pint (about 1 1/4 cups) of water off the heat and in stages so it goes smooth before the wine arrives.
- "Best rice" in No. 2A soft-cooking white rice, pudding rice or short-grain, not basmati. Two ounces is about a third of a cup; expect it to need 20 minutes or so in the 3/4 pint (about 1 3/4 cups) of water, and to swallow more liquid than you expect.
- Aromatics"Thin rind" means pared zest with no white pith, which turns the soup bitter. Fish out the lemon peel and the half stick of cinnamon before the eggs go in.
- No. 3's measuresA tea-cupful of crumbs is roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup, fried in butter until dry and nut-brown so they hold some crunch against the hot liquid. Bring the wine and water only to the point of boiling — hard boiling drives off the wine's aroma, which is the whole point of the dish.
- Yield and serviceEach version makes about 3 to 4 small servings — these are cupfuls, not bowls. Warm the tureen first, since there is no further cooking to bring the temperature back up, and send the sponge cakes with No. 3 as directed.
Sweet Weinsuppe belonged to a whole German family of fruit and wine soups — including the chilled Kaltschale — served as a light supper dish, an invalid's meal, or a course in its own right rather than as dessert. They depend on the wine of the Mosel and Rhine, low in alcohol and high in acid, which is why the recipes insist on "light German wine" and then sweeten it back up with sugar and lemon. Cassell's, compiled in London in the later nineteenth century, gathered such dishes from across Europe, noting frankly that they are "very quickly made". The egg-and-crumb thickenings here reflect what was a standard medieval and early modern way of giving body to a liquid before flour-based sauces became routine.