Farina Soup
4 cups White Stock III 1/4 cup farina 2 cups scalded milk 1 cup cream Few gratings of nutmeg Salt and pepper Heat stock to boiling-point, add farina, and boil fifteen minutes; then add milk, cream, and seasonings.
A simple cereal-thickened white soup of the kind that filled the first course of formal dinners a century ago. Two things decide whether it succeeds: how you introduce the farina, and how gently you treat the dairy at the end.
- FarinaFarina is milled wheat endosperm, sold today as Cream of Wheat and close to a fine semolina. Use the plain uncooked kind, not instant, and not the flavoured breakfast packets.
- Add it as rain, not a scoopSprinkle the 1/4 cup into the boiling stock in a thin stream while whisking hard. Dumped in at once it clumps immediately, and the lumps will not break up over the next fifteen minutes.
- Fifteen minutes is right, but stirUnlike many old timings, this one is not inflated: farina needs the full quarter hour at a bare simmer to lose its raw graininess. It settles and scorches, so stir the bottom of the pan often, or cook it in a double boiler.
- White Stock IIIA numbered reference to another recipe in the book, meaning a pale unbrowned stock from veal or chicken bones with mild aromatics. Any light, unsalted chicken or veal stock works; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will muddy the colour.
- Scalded milkScalding meant heating milk to just below the boil, originally to check souring and to keep it from curdling when it met hot liquid. With pasteurised milk you only need it warm, but adding it warm rather than cold still keeps the soup from stalling.
- CreamPeriod "cream" in soups was probably nearer today's light cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat, than heavy cream at 36 percent, which will make the soup heavier than intended; thin it with a little more milk if that is all you have.
- Do not boil after the dairy goes inOnce milk and cream are added, hold the soup below a simmer. A boil will curdle it and, with a starch-thickened base, can also make it taste scorched very quickly.
- Seasoning and nutmegSeason at the end, after the dairy: the stock reduces during the fifteen minutes of boiling and salting early can overshoot. Grate the nutmeg fresh and sparingly, a dozen strokes at most, so it reads as warmth rather than flavour.
- YieldSomething under the seven cups of combined liquid, allowing for reduction during the boil; enough for six as a first course or four as a light supper with bread.
Farina soup belongs to a family of "white soups" that filled the opening course of many American and English dinners from the later nineteenth century into the early twentieth: a pale stock, a starch to give body, and milk or cream to soften the colour and taste. Cookbooks of the era commonly print a run of near-identical recipes differing only in the thickener, farina, sago, tapioca, barley, vermicelli or rice. Farina was a familiar breakfast cereal recommended for invalids and children, which gave a soup like this a reputation for being nourishing and easy to digest as well as elegant. The numbered stock reference reflects the systematic cookery-school approach of the period, in which a handful of foundation stocks were given once and then cross-referenced throughout the book rather than repeated.