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Hasty Soup
Into a quart of boiling water throw lightly four tablespoonfuls of semolina, so that the grains are separated. Let it boil for a quarter of an hour, with pepper and salt. Take the tureen and put the yolk of an egg in it with a bit of butter the same size, mix them with a fork and pour in a teacupful of hot water with extract of meat in it, as strong as you wish. Quickly pour in the semolina soup and serve it at once. This is a quickly made and inexpensive dish, besides which it is a nice one.
A semolina soup finished with an egg-and-butter liaison in the tureen. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes and depends on two small points of technique rather than on ingredients.
- The hinge: the liaison goes in the tureen, not the panThe yolk, butter and meat broth are beaten in the cold serving bowl, and the boiling soup is poured onto them from the pan. Reversing this, or returning the mixed soup to the heat, will scramble the yolk into threads.
- Raining in the semolina"Throw lightly" means scatter it over boiling water in a thin stream while stirring, so it does not clump. Four tablespoons to a quart is a thin soup; it thickens noticeably as it stands.
- A quarter of an hour is right hereUnlike most old boiling times, this one is not excessive. Coarse semolina needs 12-15 minutes to lose its raw, chalky bite. Fine semolina or instant couscous-grade grain will be done in 5.
- Extract of meatA concentrated meat essence of the kind then sold in jars or cubes (Liebig's and Bovril were the familiar British brands). A beef bouillon paste or half a stock cube dissolved in a teacupful (roughly 4-6 fl oz) of hot water gives the same effect. "As strong as you wish" leaves the strength to the cook; the semolina itself is already seasoned with pepper and salt in the pan.
- Butter "the same size"The size of the egg yolk, so roughly 2-3 teaspoons. It is there for richness and to keep the yolk from seizing, not for body.
- The yolk is barely cookedThe yolk is only lightly cooked -- it is set by the heat of the poured soup alone, and how far it cooks depends on the temperature of the tureen and how fast the soup goes in. Use a pasteurised yolk if serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg.
- YieldAbout 1.5 quarts once the broth is added: four modest first-course servings. Salt at the end, since meat extract is already salty.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes collected among Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion, and it was published in aid of Belgian relief. That origin shows plainly in a dish like this: a quart of water, four spoons of semolina, one yolk and whatever meat extract is in the cupboard, described with evident pride as "quickly made and inexpensive... besides which it is a nice one." Semolina, the coarse wheat middlings left from milling, was a cheap and common thickener for soups and milk puddings alike, and the trick of binding a thin soup with an egg yolk beaten in the tureen is widespread - the French call such a binding a liaison, and Italian stracciatella works on the same principle of egg meeting hot broth.