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Cream Cheese Soup--No. 1
Place a pint of veal stock over the fire; add an onion, and boil for fifteen minutes. Strain out the onion, and return the stock to the fire. Bring a pint of milk to the scalding point, thicken with 2 tablespoonfuls of flour rubbed into one of butter; season with celery salt and white pepper, and add to the veal stock. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs until they are light, stir into the veal stock with the thickened milk, add 4 tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese, and serve.
A liaison soup of the old school: a light roux-thickened milk poured into veal stock, then finished with egg yolks and Parmesan. Everything hinges on the last minute.
- Keep it below a simmer after the eggs go inOnce the yolks are stirred in, the soup must never reach a boil or the eggs will curdle into threads. Hold it at about 170-180F, stirring, just until it thickens perceptibly.
- Temper the yolksBeat the yolks light as directed, then whisk a ladleful of the hot soup into them before returning the mixture to the pan. Adding cold yolks straight to hot stock is the usual cause of a grainy result.
- Veal stockA pale, gelatinous stock from veal bones was a common neutral base in cookery of this period. A light chicken stock is the closest substitute; avoid dark or heavily reduced stocks, which will overwhelm the cheese.
- The roux proportionTwo tablespoons flour rubbed into one of butter is a dry, crumbly paste rather than a proper roux. Work it into the scalding milk off the heat in small pieces, or melt the butter and stir in the flour first, then whisk in the milk to avoid lumps.
- Scalding pointThat means milk heated until it steams and shows bubbles at the rim, roughly 180F, not boiling. Boiled milk in a soup like this tends to form a skin and to taste cooked.
- ParmesanGrate it finely and add it off the heat so it melts smoothly. Real Parmigiano-Reggiano is salty, so taste before adding more celery salt.
- YieldA pint of stock and a pint of milk give roughly a quart of finished soup: three to four first-course servings. Serve at once, as it does not hold or reheat well.
Cream soups occupied a whole chapter in many turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, and their structure was almost formulaic: a thin stock, a flour-thickened milk or cream, and often a final enrichment of egg yolk called a liaison, borrowed from French practice. The "cream cheese" of the title is most likely not the fresh spreadable cheese sold under that name today but a description of the soup itself, creamed and cheesed. Grated Parmesan was among the imported cheeses available in American cities by this period, sold hard and dry and prized for exactly this kind of savory finish, and veal stock was a common light base at a time when veal bones were cheap.