Duchess Soup
4 cups White Stock III 2 slices carrot, cut in cubes 2 slices onion 2 blades mace 1/2 cup grated mild cheese 1/3 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 2 cups scalded milk Cook vegetables three minutes in one and one-half tablespoons butter, then add stock and mace; boil fifteen minutes, strain, and add milk. Thicken with remaining butter and flour cooked together; add salt and pepper. Stir in cheese, and serve as soon as cheese is melted.
A cream-of-cheese soup built on a light veal or chicken stock, in the pattern of the Boston Cooking School books. The whole dish holds together on one point: the cheese goes in off the heat.
- Do not let it boil after the cheeseOnce the cheese is added, keep the pan below a simmer and stir only until it melts. Boiled cheese separates into grease and rubbery strings, and no amount of whisking brings it back.
- White Stock IIIA cross-reference to the stock chapter: a mild, uncoloured stock from veal knuckle or fowl, unsalted and unbrowned. Four cups of a low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily seasoned, which will muddy both colour and flavour.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg, sold as whole "blades" and now mostly as ground powder. Blades vary in size and conversions differ, so figure on a small pinch to about 1/4 teaspoon ground, added with the milk rather than boiled in the stock, since ground mace cannot be strained out.
- Butter, split two waysThe full 1/3 cup is about 5 1/3 tablespoons. One and a half tablespoons cooks the vegetables; the remaining scant 4 tablespoons goes into the roux with 1/4 cup flour.
- Cook the roux outFour tablespoons butter to 1/4 cup flour thickens 6 cups of liquid to a light cream. Let the paste bubble two or three minutes before it meets the hot liquid, or the soup tastes of raw flour.
- "Mild cheese"A young, fresh-tasting cheese was meant, not a sharp aged one. A mild cheddar, a young Gouda or Gruyere all work; grate it fine so it melts before the soup cools.
- Scalded milkScalding raw milk helped keep it from souring in the pot, and was in any case routine in books of this period. With pasteurised milk the main benefit is that hot milk does not chill the soup when it goes in, so warming it is enough.
- YieldRoughly five to six cups once the stock has boiled down and been strained; enough for four to six as a first course.