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Asparagus Heads (Melt five ounces of butter)
Melt five ounces of butter in a stewpan, and stir two ounces of flour into it. When well mixed up add two pints of white stock. When this boils add two ounces of pearl-barley, and let it cook for about two hours; then pass it through a hair sieve. Return it to the stewpan, and let it simmer for about ten minutes; draw it off the fire, and stir in the yolks of four eggs well beaten.
After the eggs are in the soup it must not boil, or the eggs will curdle. Add the cream; stir well till all is thoroughly mixed, and serve with asparagus heads.
This is a barley velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison — the asparagus heads of the title are the garnish, not the body of the soup. The whole dish hinges on the last minute, when the yolks go in.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksOnce the beaten yolks are stirred in, the soup must stay below a simmer — roughly 165–180F. A single bubble will scramble them and the soup turns grainy. Temper the yolks with a ladle of hot soup first, then return the mixture to the pan off the heat.
- "Add the cream" — quantity missingThe passage as printed never states how much; the definite article suggests a quantity may have been given elsewhere in the book, but it is not here. For two pints of stock, 1/2 cup of heavy cream is a reasonable liaison; whisk it into the yolks before they go in, which also protects them from the heat.
- StewpanA heavy-bottomed saucepan of at least 3 quarts. The wide base matters for the roux and for even heat once the eggs are in.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, unsalted and pale. Two pints is 4 cups by US measure; if the book is using imperial pints, closer to 5 cups. Commercial low-sodium chicken stock works, but season at the end since the barley absorbs liquid and concentrates salt.
- Pearl-barleyStill sold under that name. Two hours of cooking is not excessive here — the grain has to collapse completely so it can be forced through the sieve; the barley is a thickener, not a texture.
- Hair sieveA horsehair sieve was the fine-mesh tool of the period. Use a fine chinois and a ladle to press the solids through, or blend the soup and then strain. Expect to lose some volume.
- The asparagus headsCut the top two inches from the spears, boil in salted water 2–4 minutes depending on thickness, and refresh in cold water so they stay green. Add them to the plated soup at the last moment; held in the hot liquid they go olive-drab.
- YieldAbout 4 to 5 cups after sieving — six small first-course servings. It does not reheat well, since any return to the boil breaks the egg.
Egg-yolk-and-cream liaisons of this kind are the backbone of nineteenth-century "white" soups, the class of dishes that later French codification would file under velouté and its enriched cousins. The barley here does double duty: it thickens beyond what a two-ounce roux can manage, and once sieved it leaves a silky body. Pearl barley is often said to have been a staple thickener in British kitchens before flour-based sauces became routine, appearing in invalid cookery and, by tradition, in gentlemen's-club soups alike, and its presence in a book of "high class" recipes shows how a cheap grain could be laundered into elegance by straining. The asparagus tips are pure display — a spring vegetable served in the small quantity that signals a kitchen with a garden or a good greengrocer behind it.