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Cream of Cheese Soup
Heat, but not boil, in a double boiler, one full quart of milk, one blade of mace, one teaspoon of minced onion, one tablespoon of carrot. Blend together one-fourth cup of butter and two level tablespoons of flour. To this add the hot milk, half a cup at a time, stirring constantly and cooking between each addition.
Strain back into the double boiler, add three-fourths cup of grated cheese and stir till melted. Season with salt and white pepper and pour over the beaten yolks of two eggs. Cook a moment, remove from the bath and beat with an egg beater till covered with a fine froth.
Serve at once in hot cups. -Anne Warner.
A cheese velouté finished with egg yolks, from the era when a double boiler was standard equipment. The technique is sound; the proportions and a few of the terms need translating.
- Keep it below a simmerThis is the hinge. Cheese held above about 175F breaks into rubbery threads and a slick of fat, and the egg yolks curdle not far above that. The double boiler is not fussiness — it is the only thing keeping the soup smooth, so keep the water underneath hot but never at a rolling boil.
- A blade of maceOne piece of the dried, lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold whole as "blade mace" in spice shops. If you only have ground, use a scant 1/8 teaspoon and accept that you cannot strain it out; the flavor is nutmeg-adjacent but lighter and more floral.
- The butter is generousA quarter cup of butter to two level tablespoons of flour is far more fat than a modern roux carries, and the excess will pool on the surface. Two tablespoons of butter to two of flour gives the same thickening with a cleaner finish.
- "One tablespoon of carrot"Minced or finely grated carrot, a tablespoon's worth — a piece of a carrot rather than a whole one. It is there for sweetness and aroma only, since everything gets strained out before the cheese goes in.
- The cheesePeriod "grated cheese" in an American household book usually points to a firm aged Cheddar or a dry grating cheese, though the recipe does not specify. Three-quarters of a cup grated is about 3 ounces. Grate it fine and add it off the direct heat in handfuls; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch that will make the soup grainy.
- Tempering the yolksPour the hot soup over the beaten yolks in a thin stream while whisking, rather than tipping it in at once, then return the mixture to the double boiler for the brief final cooking. The yolks thicken the soup and give it the sheen the froth sits on.
- The frothBeating off the heat with a rotary beater or whisk aerates the surface — an intentional presentation, not a mistake. It collapses quickly, which is why the recipe insists on serving at once.
- Yield and serviceAbout a quart of finished soup, or four to six servings in the small cups the recipe calls for. Warm the cups; the soup is held well below boiling and cools fast in a cold vessel.
Cream soups of this kind — milk thickened with a butter-and-flour binding, enriched at the last moment with egg yolk — filled the first course of American middle-class dinners from the 1890s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period print dozens of variations on the same formula with celery, corn, or cheese swapped in. The whole blade of mace and the tiny quantity of aromatic vegetable infused into the milk follow nineteenth-century English practice, where mace was a common warm spice for milk and fish dishes. The recipe carries a contributor's signature, as printed.