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Potage à la Royale
Ingredients.
Three pints of White Stock.
Two ounces of cooked Macaroni.
Three yolks of Eggs.
One ounce of grated Parmesan Cheese.
One gill of Cream.
This is an ingredient list from a cookery-school notebook rather than a full method: the book assumes the reader already knows how to finish a white soup with a liaison. Everything below is about supplying what the page leaves unsaid.
- The hinge: the liaison must not boilYolks, cream and cheese go in off the heat, at the very end. Whisk a ladle of the hot stock into the beaten yolks and cream first, return the mixture to the pan and hold it just below a simmer until it thickens lightly. One bubble and the yolks scramble into threads.
- A gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or about two-thirds of a US cup. American sources of the same date often mean 4 fl oz, so the two are not interchangeable.
- Three pintsImperial pints of 20 fl oz, so 60 fl oz, roughly 1.7 litres. At soup-plate portions that would serve six to eight.
- White stockVeal knuckle and a fowl, simmered without browning and skimmed clear, so the soup stays pale. A good unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute; avoid anything roasted or dark.
- Two ounces of cooked macaroniWeighed after boiling, as the wording implies. Period macaroni came in long tubes and would have been cut into short lengths for soup rather than left long. Cook it separately and add at the end so it does not cloud the stock.
- ParmesanAn ounce is about a third of a cup finely grated. Add it with the cream and yolks and let it melt in the residual heat; boiled Parmesan turns stringy and can separate into oily specks.
- SeasoningThe list gives none, which is normal for a school recipe built on a seasoned stock. Salt after the cheese has gone in, since Parmesan carries a good deal of its own, and finish with white pepper rather than black to keep the colour.
- ServingServe as soon as it thickens. A liaison soup does not hold well on the stove and is easily split by reheating, so it is best made last and carried straight to table.
Potage à la Royale is one of the stock entries in the Anglo-French repertoire taught in British cookery schools, when kitchen French was a mark of a properly trained cook and menus in better households were written in it. In strict classical usage a royale is a moulded savoury custard of egg and stock, cut into small shapes and dropped into a clear consommé, and the name is generally traced to that garnish; in practice English and Scottish teaching books applied "à la Royale" loosely to any pale, rich soup finished with egg yolks and cream, which is what this version is. The egg-and-cream liaison itself is much older than the name, and thickening a broth with beaten yolks runs back through medieval European cookery. The abbreviated, ingredient-only format suggests a recipe written to be copied down alongside a demonstration.