Felice Lyne
"Pleased from thy table rise."
MUSHROOM SOUP
½ pound mushrooms 1 cup boiling water 4 cups white stock 1/4 cup pearl sago Salt and pepper 1 cup heavy cream 2 eggs (yolks) Clean and chop mushrooms, and add stock. Cook twenty minutes and rub through sieve. Cook sago in boiling water thirty minutes, add to stock and, soon as boiling point is reached, season with salt and pepper, then add cream and yolks of eggs. Sincerely yours,
A rich cream soup in the Edwardian manner, thickened first with sago and then finished with a liaison of yolks and cream. Everything hinges on the last thirty seconds.
- Never boil after the liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the soup must not return to a boil or the yolks will curdle into threads. Whisk a ladle of the hot soup into the beaten yolks and cream first, return the mixture to the pan off the heat, and warm it gently to about 175F.
- White stockIn this period that means an unbrowned stock of veal knuckle or chicken, mild and slightly gelatinous. A good unsalted chicken stock is the nearest thing on a shop shelf; avoid anything dark or heavily seasoned, which will fight the mushrooms.
- Pearl sagoSmall dried pellets of palm-pith starch, still sold in Asian and South Asian groceries. Small pearl tapioca is the usual substitute in the same quantity. Thirty minutes in a cup of water should be enough to take the pearls clear and slack rather than chalky in the middle, though sago drinks up liquid and you may need a splash more.
- Rub through a sieveA blender or food mill does this in a moment, and a pass through a fine sieve afterward gives the smooth texture the original intends. Blend before the sago goes in, or the soup turns gluey.
- MushroomsA pound and a half of ordinary white or cremini mushrooms is a large quantity for four cups of stock, and that is the point. For deeper flavor, sweat the chopped mushrooms in butter until they release and reabsorb their liquid before the stock goes in.
- SeasoningThe recipe salts after the sago is in, not before, and there is no reason to depart from that order. A scrape of nutmeg and a squeeze of lemon at the end are not in the original but suit the cream.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four to six as a first course. It thickens as it cools and does not reheat well once the yolks are in, so make it to serve.
Celebrated Actor Folks' Cookeries collected recipes solicited from stage performers of the 1910s, each signed off with a flourish, and Felice Lyne was among the singers rather than the actors. An American soprano from Kansas, she came to sudden notice in London around 1911 singing at Oscar Hammerstein I's short-lived London Opera House, and toured widely thereafter. The soup itself is standard hotel cookery of the period: a puree of mushrooms in pale stock, bound with sago and finished with the egg-and-cream liaison that French kitchens had used for generations to give body without flour. Sago, imported from the pith of Southeast Asian palms, was a staple thickener in British and American kitchens of the period, turning up in puddings and soups alike.