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Cream of Asparagus Soup No. 1
Drain the liquid from a one-pint can of asparagus; wash by letting cold water run over it, and put the stalks through a colander, making one cup of puree. Make a white sauce of the following ingredients:-- 2 cups milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt Add the hot puree slowly to the hot white sauce, stirring constantly.
A plain béchamel-based cream soup of the sort that filled the soup chapter of every early twentieth-century meatless cookbook. Two details need attention: the vessel called a colander here, and the fact that no seasoning beyond salt is given.
- "Through a colander"The instruction implies pressing the stalks through, not merely draining them. To get one cup of pur he stalks through a fine mesh with the back of a ladle, or simply blend them; a modern perforated colander will only strain them.
- Rinsing the asparagusThe cold-water rinse presumably washes off the canning liquor, which older canned goods were often criticised for. It can still be worth doing today, though the liquid may also be kept and used in place of some of the milk.
- Fresh asparagus insteadA one-pint can yields roughly 10 oz drained. About 1 lb of fresh asparagus, trimmed and simmered until quite soft, gives the same cup of purée and a much greener flavour.
- The white sauceTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour to two cups milk is a thin béchamel. Cook the roux a full two minutes before adding milk so the soup does not taste of raw flour, and add the milk gradually to keep it smooth.
- The hinge: add purée to sauce, not the reverseThe hinge: add purée to sauce, not the reverse -- both must be hot and the purée goes in slowly with constant stirring, as the recipe specifies. Adding it cold or all at once risks the milk looking curdled.
- Do not boil after combiningOnce the purée is in, hold the soup just below a simmer. A hard boil thins the starch bond and can separate the milk.
- SeasoningOne teaspoon salt for the roughly three cups of finished soup is about right, but the recipe stops there. White pepper, a grating of nutmeg, and a spoonful of cream or a little lemon at the end all belong.
- YieldAbout three cups of soup — two generous servings as a main course, four as a first course.
Cream soups built on a white sauce were a mainstay of American vegetarian and "meatless" cookery in the decades around 1900, giving a substantial dish without stock. The reliance on a can is not merely a shortcut: commercially canned asparagus was available by the late nineteenth century and put a spring vegetable on the table out of season, and cookbooks of the period often cite pint and quart cans as measures. The numbered title -- "No. 1" -- suggests the book printed more than one version of the soup, a common habit in these collections.