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Cheese and Onion Soup
2 large onions, cut fine 4 tablespoons shortening 2 tablespoons flour 1 quart hot milk 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten salt and pepper 1/2 cup grated cheese 6 slices bread Cook the onions in the shortening until transparent, mix in the flour, then add milk and stir well, cooking for 20 minutes in a double boiler. Strain and pour the milk slowly onto the beaten eggs. Season to taste. Toast the bread, sprinkle with cheese and put one piece into each plate. Pour boiling soup over and serve at once. Serves 6.
A creamed onion soup finished with egg yolks and served over cheese toast — closer to a French soupe à l'oignon in white-sauce form than to the brown, long-simmered version. The whole dish turns on how the yolks are handled.
- The hinge: never boil after the yolks go inOnce the strained milk is stirred into the beaten yolks, the soup must not return to a boil or it will scramble into grains. Hold it below about 180F; if you want it hotter, do it in the double boiler and stir constantly.
- "Pour boiling soup over"Taken literally this contradicts the egg-yolk step. Read it as the period's shorthand for steaming hot — get the soup as hot as it will go without simmering, and have the plates warmed so it stays that way.
- Shortening'Shortening' in an American recipe of this kind may mean lard, butter or a vegetable shortening; the recipe does not specify. Butter gives a better onion soup and the same quantity works; the roux is a thin one, two tablespoons of flour to a quart of milk.
- Double boiler, 20 minutesTwenty minutes over simmering water is not excessive here — it cooks the flour out and lets the onion perfume the milk. A heavy saucepan over low heat will do it in about the same time with regular stirring.
- StrainingThe recipe discards the onion entirely and keeps only the flavoured milk, which is why the finished soup is smooth and pale. If you would rather keep the body, blend the onions back in instead of straining and skip the sieve.
- The cheese'Grated cheese' is unspecified; a firm store cheese such as a sharp Cheddar or a dry American suits it. Half a cup across six slices of toast is a thin scattering; it is meant to melt into the bread, not to form a gratin crust.
- AssemblyThe toast goes into the plate first and the soup over it, so the bread softens but does not disintegrate. Toast it dry and fairly dark; soft bread collapses immediately.
- YieldSix servings as written, but they are soup-plate portions built around one slice of toast each — a light supper course rather than a main dish.