Almond Soup
INGREDIENTS. - 4 lbs. of lean beef, or veal, a few vegetables as for Stock (see STOCK), 6 oz. of vermicelli, 4 blades of mace, 6 cloves, HCI lb. lb. of sweet almonds, the yolks of 6 eggs. 1 gill of thick cream or milk, rather more than 3 quarts of water. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Boil the beef or veal, vegetables and spices gently in water that will cover them, till the gravy is very strong, and the meat very tender; then strain off the gravy, and set it on the fire with the specified quantity of vermicelli to 2 quarts. Let it boil till sufficiently cooked. Have ready the ALMOND TARTLETS. almonds, blanched and pounded very fine; eggs boiled hard; mixing the almonds, whilst pounding, with a little of the soup, lest the latter should grow oily.
Pound them to a pulp, and keep adding to them, by degrees, a little soup, until they are thoroughly mixed together. Let the soup be cool when mixing, and do it perfectly smooth. Strain it through a sieve, set it on the fire, stir frequently, and serve hot. Just before taking it up, add the cream.
TIME.-From 4 to 5 hours to simmer meat and vegetables; 20 minutes to cook the vermicelli.
SEASONABLE all the year.
A Victorian white soup: a strong meat broth thickened and enriched with pounded almonds and hard-boiled yolks, finished with cream. The technique is fussier than the ingredient list suggests, and one step decides whether it works.
- The hinge: keep the almonds cool and wetPounded almonds release their oil the moment they are worked dry or warm, and the soup separates into a greasy slick that will not come back. Add a spoonful of cooled broth as you grind, and only mix almonds into soup that is cool — reheat gently afterwards, never at a boil.
- A food processor does the poundingBlanched almonds with a ladle of cold broth will go to a smooth paste in a processor in a minute or two; pulse rather than run it, and stop as soon as it is smooth. Straining through a fine sieve afterwards is still worth doing.
- The almond quantity is unclearThe weight of sweet almonds has been mangled in this printing ('HCI lb. lb.'), most likely a quarter pound, i.e. about 4 oz (roughly 115 g) of blanched almonds. That is a workable proportion for the 2 quarts of broth.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in British measure — a generous half cup of double cream or whole milk. It goes in at the very last moment, just before the soup is taken up.
- The eggsSix yolks are listed and the method calls for eggs boiled hard: boil the eggs, discard the whites, and pound the cooked yolks with the almonds. These are not raw yolks for a liaison, so there is no curdling risk, but the soup must not boil once they are in or it will turn grainy.
- Vermicelli timingThe original allows twenty minutes. Modern fine vermicelli needs four to six minutes; cook it separately in a little of the broth and add it at the end, or it will drink the stock and go to paste.
- The meat is spentFour pounds of lean beef or veal simmered four to five hours gives a very strong gravy and leaves boiled meat with little flavour left. Plan to use it in a pie, hash or potted meat rather than serving it alongside.
- YieldTwo quarts of finished soup serves eight to ten as a first course. The broth can be made a day ahead and chilled, which also makes the fat easy to lift off — worth doing before the almonds go in.
Almond soups belong to a long English line of "white soups" that runs back through medieval cookery, when ground almonds and almond milk stood in for dairy on fast days and gave dishes the pale colour that was prized at grand tables. By Mrs Beeton's day the fasting logic had gone but the prestige had not: a smooth, pale, richly thickened soup announced a kitchen with time and hands to spare, since blanching and pounding almonds in a mortar was laborious work before the soup was even assembled. The pairing of pounded almonds with hard-boiled yolks as a thickener is older than roux-based practice in English households, and its survival here in the middle of a Victorian household manual shows how long such methods persisted alongside newer French technique.