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Asparagus Soup
Cut the asparagus into small pieces and put on to boil in salt water, with slices of middling; just before dinner, taking it off, beat four eggs and stir in one pint milk or cream, a piece of butter. A piece of veal may be boiled with it, if you wish meat.--Mrs. H.
Asparagus Soup.
Parboil the asparagus with as much water as will cover them; then pour the water and asparagus into milk, then add butter, pepper and salt, also bread crumbs, and boil until the asparagus is done.--Mrs. S.
Two versions from two contributors, both written in the shorthand of a cook who already knows the dish. Neither gives quantities for the asparagus, so work from the liaison backwards: four eggs and a pint of milk will carry about two pounds of trimmed asparagus in roughly two quarts of liquid, serving six to eight.
- Middling"Middling" is the cured side meat of the hog — what would now be sold as salt pork or slab bacon. Two or three thin slices are enough to season a pot of soup; if it is heavily salted, cut back sharply on the salt in the cooking water.
- The egg liaison is the hingeThe first recipe has you beat four eggs with a pint of milk or cream and stir it into the hot soup off the heat. Temper it: whisk a ladle or two of the hot broth into the egg mixture first, then return everything to the pot and hold it below a simmer. Poured in cold, or boiled afterwards, it will scramble into threads.
- "Just before dinner, taking it off"This means the pot comes off the fire before the eggs go in, and the soup is served immediately. There is no reheating an egg-thickened soup of this kind without splitting it.
- Cooking time for asparagusBoth recipes boil the asparagus until soft, in the older style of a thoroughly cooked soup; neither purées or strains it. Tender green asparagus needs five to eight minutes for the stalk pieces; add the tips in the last two or three minutes if you want them to hold their shape.
- Second version's proportionsMrs. S. parboils the asparagus in just enough water to cover, then adds that liquid and the vegetable to milk; she gives no ratio, so about one part cooking water to two parts milk is a reasonable modern starting point for a soup rather than a broth. The bread crumbs are the thickener here, in place of the eggs — start with half a cup of soft crumbs per quart and let them dissolve.
- Veal, if you want meatThe original simply boils the veal along with the asparagus. For a cleaner result, a pound of veal shank or breast simmered in the water for an hour before the asparagus goes in makes a light stock; strain and skim it before proceeding, or the fat will show on the finished soup.
- Butter"A piece of butter" is unmeasured; one to two tablespoons is a reasonable reading. Stir it in at the end, with the eggs, rather than at the start.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions sent in by Virginia housekeepers — here identified only by initials — which is why the same dish appears twice in succession over two sets of initials; the book preserves the disagreement rather than settling it. Asparagus was a fixture of the Tidewater and Piedmont kitchen garden, and a soup like this belongs to the narrow spring window before the beds were left to fern out. The egg-and-milk finish is an older English technique, the same liaison used in white soups and fricassees, and it survives here in a household book long after professional cookery had moved toward roux and stock. The instruction to boil a piece of salt middling with the vegetables — and to add veal only "if you wish meat" — marks the dish as everyday rather than company fare.