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Cream of Mushroom Soup
Wash and peel a quart of fresh mushrooms, put them into enough boiling water to well cover them, and boil until very tender. Mash and rub them through a sieve. Add to the pulp 2 quarts of chicken or veal stock; rub a table spoonful of flour and butter together until smooth, stir it into a cupful of rich cream or milk, and stir until smooth; add it to the soup, season with salt and pepper, let it boil up, and serve.
A straightforward pureed mushroom soup thickened at the last moment with a butter-flour paste stirred into cream. The only real hazard is scorching or curdling once the dairy goes in.
- The hingeStir the flour-and-butter paste into cool or barely warm cream until perfectly smooth before it meets the hot soup, as the recipe directs. Tipped straight into the hot pot it is much more likely to set into lumps.
- A quart of mushroomsMeasured by volume, not weight: roughly 1 lb of whole button or cremini mushrooms, which fill a quart measure loosely. Cultivated mushrooms today need no peeling, only a wipe or quick rinse.
- Save the cooking waterThe recipe says nothing about what to do with the water the mushrooms boiled in, and it carries much of the flavor. Use as little as will cover, and add that liquid to the soup along with the pulp.
- Rubbing through a sieveA blender or food processor does this in seconds; pass the puree through a fine sieve afterward if you want the smooth texture the original intends.
- Stock quantityTwo quarts of stock to a pound of mushrooms gives a thin, broth-like soup by current taste. One quart makes something closer to what most cooks now expect from cream of mushroom.
- Beurre manie proportionsThe original's "a table spoonful of flour and butter" is ambiguous — a spoonful of each, or of the mixture — but either way it is a very light thickening for two quarts of liquid. Double or triple it if you want body, and let the soup simmer two or three minutes after adding so the flour loses its raw taste.
- "Let it boil up"Bring it just to the point of breaking into a simmer and take it off. A cream soup held at a rolling boil will separate, and the flour is too little to protect it.
- YieldAs written, about eight to ten servings as a first course.