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Chocolate Soup
Sweet soups are essentially German, but they are nearly always welcome in families where there are children or the aged. Chocolate soup is especially nourishing. Put a quarter of a pound of grated chocolate into a saucepan with 3 pints of milk, which should be boiling when the chocolate goes in. Sweeten to taste, and cook fifteen minutes. Before serving stir in the yolks of 4 eggs well beaten up in a little milk, and a pinch of salt. Pour this over fried dice of bread or rolls, and serve; or serve with waferettes, butterines, or saltines. Just before serving, the stiffly beaten whites of the eggs may be cooked in spoonfuls on the top.
A German-style sweet soup that is essentially a thin drinking custard, served like a soup course with croutons or crackers. It is straightforward provided the eggs are handled as a custard rather than boiled.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the beaten yolks go in, keep the pan below a simmer and stir constantly until the soup thickens slightly and coats the spoon, around 175-180F. A boil after this point curdles it into sweet scrambled egg. Tempering helps: whisk a ladle of the hot chocolate milk into the yolks before returning the mixture to the pan.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter pound of chocolate is 4 oz; 3 pints is 6 cups of milk. That ratio gives a thin, pourable soup rather than a pudding, which is what is wanted here.
- Grated chocolatePeriod "grated chocolate" means a hard unsweetened or barely sweetened cake of chocolate, not cocoa powder and not modern eating chocolate. Use unsweetened baking chocolate, chopped fine, and sweeten separately as directed. Bittersweet chocolate works but cut the added sugar sharply.
- Sweeten to tasteWith unsweetened chocolate, start with about 1/3 cup sugar for the full quantity and adjust. Adding it early lets the sugar dissolve during the fifteen-minute cooking.
- The fifteen minutesPresumably to melt the chocolate fully and cook off any raw, chalky taste, though the recipe gives no reason. Keep it at a bare simmer over low heat or on a heat-diffuser, stirring often, or the milk will scorch on the bottom of the pan.
- The accompanimentsFried dice of bread are croutons cooked in butter. "Waferettes" and "butterines" are obscure; from the company they keep here they appear to be thin wafers and butter crackers of some kind, but the names cannot be pinned to particular products. Any plain wafer, butter biscuit or saltine serves the purpose.
- The meringueThe beaten whites are poached, not baked: drop them in spoonfuls onto the hot soup, cover, and let them set for two or three minutes. They will not hold long, so do it at the moment of serving.
- YieldSix cups of milk plus eggs gives roughly six to eight soup-cup servings. Serve hot, in cups or shallow bowls; it thickens noticeably as it cools.