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Stracciatella Soup (Minestra di Stracciatella)
1 egg 1 tablespoon bread crumbs 1/2 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese Beat the egg, yolk and white together; add salt and the cheese, grated, and the bread crumbs; mix well together and add to the boiling stock (strained). Stir well with a fork to prevent the egg from setting, and boil for four or five minutes.
A one-egg soup with no stock quantity given, which is the only real gap in the instructions. Everything else works exactly as written.
- How much stockNo quantity is given. A reasonable working figure is about 2 cups (1 pint) of broth for this quantity of egg, crumbs and cheese, serving one generously or two as a first course; published ratios vary. Scale the egg mixture up per pint rather than making a large batch of paste.
- The hinge: stir constantlyThe whole point of stracciatella is fine shreds, not an omelette. Pour the egg mixture into stock at a rolling boil in a thin stream while stirring briskly with a fork, and keep stirring until it sets — stop moving and you get a single sheet of curd.
- Four or five minutesThat is longer than modern practice. The shreds are done in about a minute; a full five leaves them slightly tight, though it does no harm in a broth this thin. Two minutes is a fair compromise.
- Strained stockThe recipe specifies strained stock; a clear broth shows the shreds to best advantage. Strain through a fine sieve.
- Bread crumbsDry, fine crumbs from stale bread, not the coarse panko-style crumb or seasoned commercial crumb. They thicken the shreds slightly and keep them tender; too much and the soup goes pasty.
- ParmesanGrate it finely from a piece of real Parmigiano or grana rather than using pre-grated shaker cheese. Half a tablespoon is a light hand; some recipes use more per egg.
- SaltSalt the egg mixture lightly and taste the finished soup. A well-reduced modern stock plus cheese can easily overshoot, and there is nothing in the dish to absorb it.
Stracciatella comes from stracciare, to tear or shred, and describes what the egg does in the pot rather than any ingredient: torn little rags of egg suspended in clear broth. It is associated above all with Rome and the Lazio countryside, where it belongs to the same family of thrifty broth soups as pastina in brodo — a way of making Sunday's boiled-meat stock stretch into another meal with an egg and the rind end of the cheese. The name is shared, confusingly, with a chocolate-flecked ice cream generally credited to Bergamo, which shreds in much the same way for the same reason.