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Beef Puree
1 pt. beef broth 1 tablespoon sago 1 egg yolk 2 ozs. raw beef Soak sago 1/2 hour in enough water to cover, stir into hot broth and cook until soft, add egg yolk mixed with a little broth and the beef, free from fat, and reduce to a pulp. Cook 3 minutes. Serve with Royal custard. Serves three.
A thin invalid's soup thickened with sago and enriched with egg yolk and scraped raw beef. It comes together in about ten minutes once the sago has soaked, and the temperature of the broth at each stage is what decides whether it succeeds.
- Keep the broth below a boil after the yolk goes inThe yolk is there to thicken and enrich; boiling it will curdle the soup into grains. Hold the broth at a bare simmer, around 180F, from the moment the tempered yolk is stirred in.
- The beef must still be properly cookedTwo ounces of raw beef scraped or pounded to a pulp is a large surface area of ground meat, and this dish was written for people in poor health. Bring the soup to a full simmer with the beef in it and hold it there until the pulp has lost all red colour and the soup reads 160F on a thermometer (the standard figure for ground beef); three minutes at a gentle heat is not a guarantee. If the eater is elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, cook the beef separately to that temperature first.
- SagoSago is starch from the sago palm, sold as small hard pearls. Tapioca pearls of the same size are the usual substitute and behave similarly, though not identically. Soaking half an hour is not optional \broth stey chalky in the centre.
- A pintSixteen fluid ounces, i.e. two cups, in American measure. If you are working from a British edition of the period, a pint is 20 fluid ounces and the soup will be noticeably thinner.
- \The old technique is to scrape a lean steak with the edge of a spoon, which leaves the connective tissue behind and gives a fine pulp. Very lean beef pulsed briefly in a food processor is the modern equivalent; trim every trace of fat, as the recipe insists, because fat separates and floats in a broth this thin.
- Royal custardCustard royale: egg beaten with a little stock or milk, baked gently in a shallow pan until set, cooled, and cut into small dice or diamonds to float in the soup. It is a garnish, not a sauce served alongside.
- Seasoning and yieldNo salt is specified, on the assumption the broth is already seasoned; taste before serving, as an unseasoned sago soup is very flat. Three servings means three invalid portions of roughly two-thirds of a cup each, not three bowls of soup.