Velvet Soups
To a quart of strong, well flavored consomme (beef, chicken, mutton, game, or "combination") add a large cup of rich cream which has been poured boiling hot on the beaten yolks of four eggs mixed with four tablespoons of cold cream. As a last touch of seasoning, in reheating, add a little powdered mace.
Boiled chestnuts or blanched almonds, pounded to a paste, may be added, if desired.
This is a classic egg-yolk liaison — a thickened, enriched clear soup rather than a purée. Everything depends on temperature control at the end.
- Never let it boilOnce the yolks go in, keep the soup below about 180F. At a simmer the yolks scramble and the velvet texture turns to grain. Reheat gently over low heat or in a bowl set over hot water, stirring, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon.
- Tempering, spelled outThe method is deliberate: beat the four yolks with four tablespoons cold cream, then pour the boiling cream over them in a thin stream while whisking. That raises the yolks gradually so they can be added to the hot consommé without seizing.
- "A large cup"An indefinite measure; read it as a generous cupful of heavy cream, roughly 8 to 9 fl oz. The proportion that matters is four yolks to one quart consomme; a little more or less cream only changes richness.
- Consommé"Strong, well flavored" means a stock reduced and clarified until it has real body — canned broth will taste thin against this much cream. Reduce a good homemade stock by a third if in doubt, and season it fully before the yolks go in, since you cannot boil it afterward.
- MaceGround mace is the outer covering of nutmeg: warmer and less sweet. A pinch is enough for a quart; it goes bitter in quantity. Nutmeg, used sparingly, is the nearest substitute.
- The nut variationBlanched almonds or boiled peeled chestnuts pounded to a paste are best thinned with a ladle of hot consomme and strained in before the yolks, or the soup will be gritty. A food processor does quickly what the mortar did slowly.
- AlmondsUse ordinary sweet almonds. Blanching here means slipping the skins after a soak in boiling water, not any treatment of bitter almonds, which are a different and unsafe article.
- Yield and serviceAbout five cups, enough for six small first-course servings. Serve at once in warmed cups; it cannot be brought back to a boil to recover.
"Velvet" soups belong to the late-nineteenth-century American appetite for French service done in English words: what French practice called a liaison of yolks and cream, offered to household readers under a name describing the mouthfeel rather than the method. The template is the same one behind veloute and the older German and Austrian egg-thickened broths, and it explains why the recipe is written as a formula rather than a dish — one quart of consomme, four yolks, a cup of cream, and whatever flavor the household's stockpot happened to hold that week, beef, mutton, game, or the frugal "combination" of scraps. Mace was a common seasoning for pale, creamy dishes in this period, appearing in white sauces, potted meats and milk puddings where nutmeg would read as dessert. The optional chestnut or almond paste recalls older cookery, when pounded nuts were used to thicken genteel soups before flour and roux took over.