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Soup a la Soubise
Thinly slice two Spanish onions, and cook ten minutes in one-fourth cup butter, stirring constantly. Add one quart White Stock III, cook slowly thirty minutes, and strain. Dilute three tablespoons flour with enough cold water to pour easily, add to soup, and bring to boiling-point. Then add one cup cream, and one tablespoon chopped green peppers, or one-fourth cup grated cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
A simple onion velvet soup that depends almost entirely on cooking the onions slowly enough to sweeten without browning. Everything else is a thickened stock finished with cream.
- Keep the onions paleThe ten minutes in butter should soften and sweeten the onions, not colour them. Any browning turns the finished soup grey-beige and gives it a caramelised flavour at odds with the name; keep the heat at medium-low and stir as directed.
- MeasuresOne-fourth cup butter is 4 tablespoons, about 57 g. Two Spanish onions means two large sweet onions; depending on size that could be anywhere from about a pound to a pound and a half once peeled.
- White Stock IIIThis refers to a numbered stock recipe elsewhere in the book. White stock in books of this kind is generally a mild, unbrowned stock, usually veal or veal and poultry; check the book's own recipe. A light chicken stock with no strong herbs or tomato is the practical substitute. Avoid dark or heavily reduced stock, which will overwhelm the onion.
- The straining stepAs written, the onions are strained out and only their flavour remains, leaving a thin soup thickened with flour. If you prefer a fuller texture, purée the onions into the soup with a blender before adding the flour and use less thickening.
- Thickening without lumpsThree tablespoons flour slaked with cold water is a whitewash rather than a roux, so it must go into the soup off the boil, whisked in steadily, and then be brought up to a simmer and held there a minute or two to cook out the raw-flour taste.
- After the cream, no boilingOnce the cup of cream goes in, keep the soup below a simmer. A flour-thickened cream soup can curdle or catch on the pan bottom at a hard boil, and the cheese version may turn grainy.
- Choose one finishThe green pepper and the grated cheese are alternatives, not both. Chop the pepper very fine, since it is added raw and stays crisp; for the cheese, a dry aged cheese off the heat and stirred until just melted.
- YieldAbout four to five cups, serving four as a first course.
Anything called à la Soubise in classical cookery means onions, usually cooked soft in butter and often bound with rice or béchamel; the name is traditionally traced to the household of Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, an eighteenth-century French marshal whose kitchen is credited with the purée. By the time American domestic-science cookbooks like this one were written, a soubise had been thinned into the standard cream-soup formula taught in cooking schools: sweat a vegetable in butter, add white stock, thicken with flour, finish with cream. The two optional garnishes at the end are characteristic of the genre, where one base recipe was expected to produce several nominally different soups depending on what was stirred in at the last minute.