Cheese Soup
3 cups milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup grated cheese Salt and paprika Heat the milk in a double boiler, reserving a little to mix with the flour; add this and cook thoroughly. When ready to serve add the cheese and seasoning. 1 ox-tail
A plain milk-and-cheese soup of the loose-leaf era, thin by modern standards and dependent almost entirely on the quality of the cheese. A few notes make it behave.
- The stray lineThe trailing "1 ox-tail" plainly does not belong to this soup; it is a typesetting or transcription intrusion from an adjacent recipe. Ignore it.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerOnce the cheese goes in, the soup must not boil. Cheese proteins tighten and squeeze out fat somewhere around 160-180F, leaving grainy curds in a greasy broth. A double boiler, as in the original, or a heavy saucepan over very low heat, gives you the gentle heat this needs.
- Cook the flour out"Cook thoroughly" is vague; give the milk-and-flour mixture several minutes in the double boiler after it thickens, stirring. One tablespoon of flour to three cups of milk is a very light bind, far thinner than a nappe, so any raw-flour taste is conspicuous.
- The cheeseAn American recipe of this date calling simply for "grated cheese" most likely intends a firm Cheddar or a dry factory cheese of that type. One cup grated is roughly 3 to 4 oz. Aged cheese breaks more readily than young; pre-shredded bagged cheese carries anti-caking starch that can make the soup chalky.
- Add it off the direct heatPull the pan from the burner, add the cheese in two or three handfuls, and stir until each melts before the next goes in. Dumping it all at once drops the temperature unevenly and encourages clumping.
- SeasoningSalt lightly at the end, after the cheese, which is already salty. The paprika is doing double duty as colour and mild warmth; a scant quarter teaspoon of sweet paprika is in the spirit of the original, and a grating of nutmeg is a period-appropriate addition.
- YieldThree cups of milk gives about four small first-course cups or two generous bowls. It is meant as an opening course, not a main.
- Standing and reheatingThe soup skins over quickly and separates if held. Make it to serve, and if it must be reheated, do so gently over water and whisk it back together.
Cheese soups of this kind belong to the era when American cookery schools were teaching white sauce as the foundation of a whole shelf of dishes: thin it for soup, thicken it for creamed vegetables, bind it for croquettes. This version is that lesson applied to cheese, and it reflects the period's confidence in milk as a nourishing food for households and invalids alike. The loose-leaf format itself is a clue to the era's ambitions: pages could be pulled, propped, and replaced, and new leaves added as the cook acquired them.