Almond Soup
4 ounces of almonds 1 quart of milk 6 cloves, 1 small blade of mace 2 ounces of butter 2 dozen white peppercorns 1 tablespoon of flour 4 ounces of onions Put the milk in a saucepan with the cloves, mace and peppercorns; bring it to the boiling-point, and let it simmer.
Chop the onions, and fry them in the butter until tender but not brown. Add them to the milk, and let it boil again: then let it simmer for half an hour; strain, and cool.
Blanch the almonds, put them through a nut mill; then pound in a mortar, adding one drop of water occasionally to prevent oiling. Add the cool milk, a little at a time, to the almond paste, mixing it as smoothly as possible. Now boil the soup, stirring constantly. Thicken with either a tablespoon of white roux or a tablespoon of corn-flour. Boil, and serve with croutons.
A white soup of the old English type, thickened with pounded almonds rather than cream. The work is all in the almond paste, and a food processor removes most of it.
- Grinding the almondsThe nut mill and mortar exist to make a smooth paste without pressing out the oil. A food processor does the same job if you pulse rather than run it, adding the drop of water when the mass starts to look greasy. Blanched almond flour, moistened to a paste, is an acceptable shortcut, though the texture is slightly grainier.
- Why the milk is cooledThe recipe has you cool the strained infusion and add it to the almond paste a little at a time, which is what lets the paste be worked in "as smoothly as possible" instead of lumping. Adding it hot and all at once makes a smooth mixture harder to achieve.
- QuantitiesFour ounces of almonds is about 3/4 cup whole; four ounces of onion is one small to medium onion. Two dozen white peppercorns is roughly half a teaspoon; white pepper was the convention in white soups so that no dark specks showed.
- Corn-flourBritish corn-flour is American cornstarch, not cornmeal and not fine-milled maize flour. A tablespoon slaked in cold milk before it goes in will thicken a quart adequately. The white roux is equal butter and flour cooked without colour.
- Heat controlMilk with almond solids in it scorches readily and the recipe's "now boil the soup" should be read as a bare simmer with constant stirring. A heavy pan and moderate heat will prevent a burnt taste that no amount of straining removes.
- The aromaticsCloves, mace and peppercorns are infused and then strained out, so leave them whole. Half an hour is ample; longer and the cloves dominate.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk plus the almonds gives four modest first-course servings. The croutons are not decoration here, they supply the only texture in an otherwise entirely smooth soup.
Almond soup belongs to a long line of "white soups" that ran through English and French cookery from the medieval period into the nineteenth century, when pounded almonds did the work now given to cream or stock. Almond milk was the standard substitute for dairy on fast days, when the church calendar forbade animal products for a substantial part of the year, and the technique of blanching, pounding and letting down with liquid survived in domestic cookbooks long after the religious reason for it had faded. The instruction to add water drop by drop while pounding is genuinely old craft knowledge, since almonds worked dry in a mortar release their oil and turn to butter rather than paste.