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Six Servings of Standard Cream Soup
4 cups milk or part milk and part stock 2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons fat 2 cups vegetable pulp or meat or fish pulp Salt, pepper, other seasonings 1. Make a white sauce of the liquid, flour, and fat. 2. Cook the vegetables or meat or fish until tender, drain, and mash through a sieve. 3. Combine the vegetable, meat, or fish pulp with the white sauce. 4. Season, beat with an egg-beater, and serve. A tiny portion of whipped cream or beaten egg-white may be served on top of each portion. The standard cream soup may be made somewhat thicker for purees and bisques.
This is a formula rather than a dish: one ratio that turns any cooked vegetable, meat or fish into six bowls of soup. The proportions are what to hold onto.
- The ratioTwo tablespoons each of flour and fat to 4 cups liquid is a very thin white sauce, roughly half the thickening of a standard pouring sauce. That is deliberate, since the vegetable pulp adds body. For the purees and bisques mentioned at the end, go to 3 tablespoons each.
- "Fat"At the time this meant butter, or drippings, or one of the vegetable shortenings then being promoted. Butter is the right choice for a cream soup.
- Cook the roux firstLet the flour and butter bubble together a minute or two before the liquid goes in, then add the milk gradually off the boil and whisk. Raw flour is the usual fault in a soup made this way.
- The sieve, and the alternative"Mash through a sieve" was the usual route to a smooth puree in a 1920s kitchen. A blender or stick blender does it in seconds; a food mill is closest to the original, and still worth using for fibrous things like celery or asparagus, which leave threads a blender will not break down.
- Acid vegetables curdleIf the pulp is tomato or sorrel, the milk will separate. Add the hot puree to the hot sauce rather than the reverse, keep the soup below a simmer once combined, and serve promptly.
- Stock"Part milk and part stock" is the better version for meat and fish soups. Half and half is a sensible split; use the cooking water from the vegetables rather than discarding it.
- Beating with an egg-beaterA rotary beater at the end lightens the soup and hides any slight graininess. Do it just before serving, off the heat, or the foam collapses.
- SeasoningsThe recipe leaves "other seasonings" blank on purpose. Nutmeg with spinach or cauliflower, a bay leaf steeped in the milk, mace with fish, a little dry sherry in a shellfish bisque.
- YieldSix servings of about 8 oz. Reheat gently; a floury soup scorches on the bottom of the pan and will not recover.