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Half a Cucumber
One ounce of Butter.
One saltspoonful of Castor Sugar.
Half a saltspoonful of Salt.
One pint and a half of White Stock.
Yolks of three Eggs.
One gill of Cream or Milk.
The crust of a French Roll.
Wash the lettuces, sorrel, tarragon, and chervil, and shred them all finely. Peel the cucumber, cut it into thin slices and shred these also. Melt the butter in a stewpan, place in the shredded vegetables and herbs and cook them for five minutes, but do not let them discolour. Sprinkle over the salt and castor sugar, add the stock, and let the vegetables boil slowly until tender. Beat the eggs and cream together. Take the stewpan containing the soup off the fire and let it cool.
Then strain in the liaison of eggs and cream, place the stewpan on the fire, and stir until the eggs are cooked. Put the crust of the French roll in the oven to dry for a few minutes, then cut it into small round pieces. Put these into the tureen and pour the hot soup over them.
Potage Dupoise, or Mussel Soup.
Ingredients, Two pints of Fish Stock.
Three pints of Mussels (prepared as for Dressed Mussels).
Two ounces of Butter.
Two ounces of Flour.
A few Parsley Stalks.
Half a teaspoonful of Sugar.
This is a lettuce-and-cucumber soup finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, in the French style the book takes for granted. Note that the page begins mid-ingredient-list — the title is the tail end of it — so the quantities for the lettuces, sorrel, tarragon and chervil are missing.
- The hinge: never boil the liaisonOnce the beaten yolks and cream go in, the soup must not simmer or the eggs scramble into threads. Cook it gently, stirring, until it thickens to a coating consistency — around 175F/80C — and take it straight off the heat.
- Cooling before the liaisonThe instruction to let the soup cool first is not fussiness. Adding yolks to boiling stock curdles them instantly; let the pan drop below a simmer, then temper by whisking a ladleful of hot soup into the egg mixture before it goes back.
- Missing quantitiesWith the head of the list cut off, work from proportion: roughly two heads of soft lettuce, a good handful of sorrel, and a teaspoon each of chopped tarragon and chervil suit a pint and a half of stock and half a cucumber. Sorrel is the acid note and chervil the perfume; parsley is not a substitute for either.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill in a British book of this period is 5 fl oz, a little over half a cup. A saltspoonful is about a quarter teaspoon.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar. Granulated works here since it dissolves in the stock; the quantity is tiny, and probably functions as seasoning against the sorrel's sharpness rather than to sweeten.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, pale and lightly gelatinous. Use a good unsalted chicken stock and season at the end; the recipe itself calls for only half a saltspoonful of salt.
- Stewpan and strainingA stewpan is simply a wide, straight-sided saucepan. "Strain in the liaison" means pour the egg and cream through a sieve into the soup to catch any bits of coagulated white or chalaza — the soup itself is not strained, so the shredded vegetables stay in.
- The French rollA small white roll. Drying the crust in a low oven for a few minutes, as directed, and cutting it into rounds gives croûtes; a baguette sliced thin and dried does the same job.
- YieldA pint and a half of stock plus the liaison serves four as a first course. Serve at once — reheating will break the eggs.
Soups of shredded lettuce and sorrel thickened with egg yolks and cream belong to the French repertoire of *potages liés* that late-Victorian and Edwardian British cookery drew on closely, which is why this book files an English-language method under a run of French names and follows it immediately with a *potage* of mussels. Sorrel was the ordinary kitchen-garden green for such soups before it fell out of common use; its oxalic tartness did the work that a squeeze of lemon does now. The liaison of yolks and cream is one of the oldest thickeners in European cooking, predating the flour-based roux for delicate soups, and the dried crust of a French roll in the bottom of the tureen is a survival of the medieval habit of pouring broth over bread — the word *soup* is generally traced to that sopped piece itself.}