Home › Vegetables › Barley Soup
Barley Soup
1 quart of milk, Yolks of two eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls of barley, I onion, Salt and pepper to taste.
Scald the barley, drain, put it into a pint of water. Add the onion and parsley, and if you have three or four small beef bones, add them. Simmer gently three hours. Put the milk on in a double boiler, add the barley and the water in which it was boiled, also the onion, which will be soft and tender. Season with salt and pepper. Beat the yolks lightly, put them into the soup tureen and pour in the soup slowly, stirring all the time.
A milk-based barley soup thickened at the last moment with egg yolk. The hinge is the liaison: the yolks go into the tureen cold and the hot soup is poured onto them in a thin stream, never the other way around.
- Tempering the yolksPour the hot soup into the beaten yolks a ladleful at a time, whisking constantly, and do not return the mixture to direct heat. If the soup goes back on the burner after the yolks are in, it will scramble; hold it below about 180F if you must keep it warm.
- The barleyTwo tablespoons is correct and not a misprint — the grain swells several times over in three hours. The recipe does not say which barley; pearl is the likeliest reading, and pot or hulled barley will need longer and more water.
- "Scald the barley"Cover it with boiling water, let it stand a minute or two, then drain. The point was presumably to rinse off dust and loose starch, and it is optional with modern packaged barley, though a rinse does keep the finished soup cleaner-tasting.
- Water loss over three hoursA pint of water simmering uncovered for three hours will largely disappear. Use a tight lid, the lowest possible heat, and top up with hot water so that you still have most of a cup of starchy liquid to add to the milk.
- ParsleyIt appears in the method but not the ingredient list — a common slip in these books. A few stalks that can be lifted out before serving seem to be the intent; the onion, by contrast, is explicitly kept and goes into the soup soft.
- The beef bonesOptional here, and worth including: a few marrow or shin bones turn this from a plain milk soup into something with body. Roast them first if you want more colour and flavour than the original expects, and skim the fat before adding the liquid to the milk.
- The double boilerUsed because milk scorches on a direct flame. A heavy-based saucepan over low heat works if you stir and watch it, but the double boiler is the safer route if the soup has to sit before serving.
- YieldA quart of milk plus the barley liquid gives roughly five cups — four to five servings. It thickens noticeably as it stands.
Milk soups built on barley were common invalid and nursery cookery on both sides of the Atlantic — light, warm, easily digested, and made from things that kept. The egg-yolk finish is a classic liaison, the French technique of enriching a soup off the heat, which turns up in American household manuals of the period as a way to give a plain soup gloss and substance without flour.