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Cream of Almond Soup
1/4 cup rice 2 quarts hot milk 1 quart boiling water 1/2 pound shelled almonds 1 tablespoon sugar 1 cup cold water 2 teaspoons salt Wash the rice thoroughly by pouring boiling water over it to dissolve the polish; finish with cold water. Add the rice to the boiling water, and let boil actively for twelve to fifteen minutes; then drain off the water, and add the partially cooked rice to the hot milk. Cook three-quarters of an hour. Blanch the almonds by throwing them into boiling water for about one minute or until the skin loosens from the nuts. Place them between towels. Rub vigorously to remove skin. Place the blanched almonds in a mortar, and pound them with a pestle. Add a little cold water from time to time. If a mortar and pestle are not obtainable, a wooden chopping bowl and potato masher will suffice. When the nuts have been reduced to a paste, add to the rice and milk; then add the sugar and salt. A few drops of almond flavoring may be used instead of the almonds.
A rice-thickened almond milk soup that predates the blender by a generation. Two things decide whether it works: the milk must never boil, and the almonds must be ground far past chopped.
- YieldTwo quarts of milk plus the rice and nut paste (the quart of boiling water is drained away) gives roughly two and a half quarts of soup, enough for eight to ten first-course servings. It thickens noticeably as it cools.
- Milk on low heatThree-quarters of an hour of direct heat will scorch two quarts of milk and leave brown flecks throughout the soup. Use a heavy pot over the lowest workable flame, or a double boiler, and stir up from the bottom every few minutes.
- Washing the riceThe "polish" refers to the talc-and-glucose coating once applied to milled rice to brighten it. Modern rice is not coated, so a plain cold rinse is all that is needed; the boiling-water step can be skipped.
- The mortar stepA food processor does this in two minutes. Grind the blanched almonds with the cup of cold water called for, scraping down repeatedly, until you have a smooth wet paste rather than gritty meal. Any coarseness will settle to the bottom of the bowl at table.
- BlanchingOne minute in boiling water, then drain and slip the skins off while still warm. Blanched almonds sold ready-skinned work identically and save the trouble.
- StrainingEven well-ground almonds leave some fiber. Pressing the finished soup through a fine sieve or chinois gives the smooth texture the name promises, at the cost of a little volume.
- SeasoningTwo teaspoons salt for about two and a half quarts is on the light side of ordinary; taste at the end and add more if wanted. The tablespoon of sugar is there to bring the almond forward, not to sweeten, and should not read as sweet.
- The extract shortcutAlmond extract supplies flavor but none of the body or richness the half pound of nuts contributes. If you take that route, expect a thin rice-and-milk soup and consider adding cream.
Almond milk soups and pottages have a long history in European cooking, where ground almonds thinned with water served as a standing substitute for dairy on fast days, when the church calendar forbade meat, milk and eggs for weeks at a stretch. Here the logic has inverted: the almonds are used alongside two quarts of cow's milk, so whatever the original fast-day rationale, it is not operating in this recipe. Meatless cookbooks of the early twentieth century drew on vegetarian reform movements, Seventh-day Adventist and other health-focused kitchens, and later on wartime meat conservation, and nuts were often their workhorse — pounded into pastes, roasts and loaves because a mortar could turn them into something rich enough to anchor a course. The instruction to fall back on a wooden chopping bowl and a potato masher is a reminder of how much labor stood between a cook and a smooth purée before electric motors reached the kitchen.