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Vermicelli Soup
1/2 cup vermicelli. 1 quart stock. 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 saltspoon pepper Cook the vermicelli about ten minutes in boiling salted water; drain and add to the boiling stock, together with the seasoning. Macaroni may be substituted for the vermicelli if desired; but it will have to cook longer-about half an hour.
What survives here is the seasoning and the method: pasta boiled separately, then dropped into hot stock. A few of the quantities and timings need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter of a teaspoon. Half a saltspoon is an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper, which is a light hand for a pot of soup — season to taste at the end.
- Quantities not statedThe amounts of stock and of vermicelli are not given in the text as it stands. As a working ratio, allow about 2 oz (60 g) dried vermicelli to 6 cups of well-flavoured stock, which gives four servings.
- Cook the pasta apartThis is the point of the method. Boiling vermicelli directly in the stock releases starch and clouds it; cooking it in salted water and draining keeps the broth clear.
- Ten minutes is too longDried vermicelli today will usually be done in 3 to 5 minutes, drained while still firm, since it continues to soften in the hot stock. Follow the packet and stop short of it.
- Macaroni timingHalf an hour will reduce today's macaroni to mush. Dried elbow or short-cut macaroni wants 8 to 12 minutes, again pulled a shade early.
- WorcestershireA teaspoon in a full pot is a background note rather than a flavour; it supplies the anchovy-and-tamarind depth that a light stock lacks. Add it off the boil so it does not cook out.
- ServingBest assembled at the last moment. Pasta held in hot broth swells and turns soft within about ten minutes, so combine, heat through and take it to the table.
Vermicelli — Italian for "little worms" — reached English and American kitchens as a dried import, and by the nineteenth century it was commonly used as a soup garnish rather than as a dish in its own right. Cookbooks of the period treat it much as they treat barley, rice or sago: a starch dropped into good stock to give body and something to catch on the spoon. Mrs. Fryer's loose-leaf book was issued in the era when domestic-science instruction was reshaping the American kitchen. The instruction to substitute macaroni, with an adjusted boiling time, is characteristic of the genre's interest in teaching a principle rather than a single dish.