Asparagus Soup
INGREDIENTS. 100 heads of asparagus, 2 quarts of medium stock (see STOCK), 1 pint of water, salt.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. 9d. per quart.
Scrape the asparagus, us, but do not cut off any of the stems, and boil it in a pint of water salted, until the heads are nearly done.
Then drain the asparagus, cut off the green heads very neatly, and put them on one side until the soup is ready.
If the stock is not made, add the stems of asparagus to the rest of the vegetables; if, however, the stock is ready, boil the stems a little longer ASPARAGUS. in the same water that they were first cooked in. Then strain them off, add the asparagus water to the stock, and when all is boiling drop in the green heads (or peas as they are called), and simmer for 2 or 3 minutes. If the soup boils long after the asparagus is put in, the appearance of the vegetable would be quite spoiled. A small quantity of sherry or other white wine added after the soup is put into the tureen would improve this soup very much. Sometimes a French roll is cut up and served in it.
TIME. To nearly cook the asparagus, 12 minutes.
SEASONABLE from May to August.
A clear soup rather than the puréed green soup the name now suggests: the asparagus stems flavour the stock, and the tips go in whole at the last moment as a garnish. Two things need attention — the quantity, and the final minutes.
- 100 headsVictorian asparagus was sold by the head (spear), so this is the equivalent of several modern bunches. The liquid called for is 2 quarts of stock plus the pint of asparagus water, so expect somewhere under 2½ quarts of finished soup; the recipe itself states no number of servings, only a cost of 1s. 9d. per quart.
- Medium stockMrs Beeton's "medium stock" is a light beef and veal stock, less concentrated than her rich gravy stock. A good unsalted chicken or veal stock is the closest modern stand-in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will bury the asparagus.
- The hingeOnce the green tips go into the boiling soup they get two or three minutes and no more. Boiling past that turns them olive-drab and floppy, which is the whole reason for the elaborate two-stage cooking.
- Twelve minutes is too longThat timing assumes thick, fibrous, field-grown spears. Modern asparagus, especially anything pencil-thin, is nearly done in 3 to 5 minutes. Test with a knife tip at the base of the head rather than trusting the clock.
- "Peas"The recipe notes in passing that the green heads cut from the spears were called "peas." They are simply the tips; the recipe does not say how long to cut them.
- The butterIt appears in the ingredient list and never in the method. Stir it into the hot soup off the heat, just before the tureen, for gloss.
- Scrape, not peelThe recipe says to scrape the asparagus and not to cut off any of the stems. With slender modern asparagus you may prefer to snap off the woody base instead; the stems are in any case meant to go into the stock or to be boiled on in their own water.
- Sherry and the French rollA tablespoon or two of dry sherry stirred in at the tureen, off the heat, is a real improvement. The "French roll" is a small crusty white roll, sliced and dropped in as a sop — closer to a crouton than a dumpling.
- SeasonableMay to August was the English outdoor season. Imported asparagus is now year-round, but the soup depends entirely on the vegetable's flavour, so it is still worth making in spring.
Asparagus was a gentleman's crop in nineteenth-century England — labour-intensive, slow to establish, and grown in dedicated beds on market gardens ringing London. The method here reflects an older approach to vegetable soups: nothing is puréed or thickened, and the spear is used twice over, stems surrendering their flavour to the stock while the tips are held back as the visible garnish. The instruction to save the cooking water and return it to the stock is thrift of a kind that runs through the whole book. The cut tips are called "asparagus peas", and a French roll is cut up and served in the soup, giving a thin broth some substance.