Vermicelli Soup
INGREDIENTS. -1½ lb. of bacon, stuck with cloves; oz. of butter, worked up in flour; 1 small fowl, trussed for boiling; 2 oz. of vermicelli. 2 quarts of white stock. INGREDIENTS.—1 1/2 lb. of bacon, stuck with cloves; 1/2 oz. of butter, worked up in flour; 1 small fowl, trussed for boiling; 2 oz. of vermicelli. 2 quarts of white stock. [Second recipe] INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 to 10 persons.—1/4 lb of vermicelli, 2 quarts of clear gravy stock. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Put the stock, bacon, butter and fowl into the stewpan, and stew for of an hour.
Take the vermicelli, add to it a little of the VERMICELLI. stock, and set it on the fire, till it is quite tender. When the soup is ready, take out the fowl and bacon, and put the bacon on a dish. Skim the soup as clear as possible; pour it, with the vermicelli, over the fowl.
Cut some bread thin, put in the soup, and serve.
TIME.-2 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
Vermicelli Soup: - INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 to 10 persons. lb of vermicelli, 2 quarts of clear gravy stock. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Put the vermicelli in the soup, boiling; simmer very gently for an hour, and stir frequently.
TIME. an hour.
SEASONABLE all the year.
Two related soups sit here: a substantial boiled-fowl-and-bacon version, and a plain one that is little more than vermicelli cooked in good stock. Both depend entirely on the quality of the stock, since almost nothing else seasons them.
- White stockThis is an unsalted or lightly salted stock made from veal bones, or veal and chicken, simmered without browning so it stays pale. A modern low-sodium chicken stock is the nearest thing; avoid dark beef stock, which turns the soup muddy. Two quarts, reckoned in imperial measure, is roughly 2.3 litres.
- The fowlA "small fowl trussed for boiling" was an older laying hen, tougher and more flavourful than anything sold now. Use a 3-4 lb chicken and expect it to be done in about an hour of gentle poaching, not two; test the thigh joint rather than the clock.
- Cook the vermicelli separatelyThe instruction to soften the vermicelli in a ladleful of stock apart from the pot is the one point worth keeping. Boiled in the soup itself it sheds starch and clouds the broth, which defeats the careful skimming a few lines later.
- Bacon, stuck with clovesThis means a piece of unsliced cured pork -- a slab of streaky, or a small piece of gammon -- studded with whole cloves and poached alongside the bird. The recipe has it lifted out and put on a dish of its own rather than eaten in the soup. Cured pork of any period gives up a good deal of salt to the liquid, so taste before adding any salt to the finished soup.
- Butter worked up in flourEqual weights of soft butter and flour kneaded together, the classic beurre manié, used here to give the broth a slight body. If you want a genuinely clear soup, leave it out; if you want it, whisk in small pieces at the end rather than at the start.
- Simmering timesThe second version's hour-long simmer will reduce modern dried vermicelli to paste; fine vermicelli needs only three to five minutes in simmering stock. The long time may reflect a coarser or harder dried pasta than what is sold now, though the recipe does not say.
- SkimmingSkim while the pot is at a bare tremble, drawing the fat off from one side; a rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and no amount of later skimming will retrieve it.
- Yield and servingThe plain version is given for 8 to 10; no number is stated for the fowl version. In the first recipe the soup and vermicelli are poured over the fowl itself, with the bacon put on a separate dish. The thin-cut bread goes into the soup.
Vermicelli reached English tables well before it reached English kitchens: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cooks bought it dried and imported, and treated it as a garnish for clear soups rather than as a dish in its own right. The name is Italian for "little worms". The two recipes here show the Victorian habit of building a whole dinner out of one pot -- the fowl and the clove-studded bacon are cooked in the liquid that, skimmed and dressed with pasta, becomes the soup that opens the meal. That economy sits alongside the note that the dish is "seasonable in winter".