Almond Soup
2/3 cup almonds. 6 bitter almonds. 4 tablespoons cold water 1/8 teaspoon salt 3 cups White Stock III 1 small onion 3 stalks celery 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour 2 cups scalded milk 1 cup cream Salt and pepper Blanch, chop, and pound almonds in a mortar. Add gradually water and salt; then add stock, sliced onion, and celery, let simmer one hour, and rub through a sieve. Melt butter, add flour, and pour on gradually the hot liquor; then add milk, cream, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve with
A blanched-almond veloute in the classic Fannie Farmer mould: nut milk built into a white roux, thinned with veal or chicken stock and enriched with cream. Two things in the text have gone missing in transmission, so read the notes before shopping.
- The almond quantity is missingThe ingredient list as printed opens with the water, so the weight of almonds has dropped out. The original figure is not recoverable from what survives here; a cup of blanched almonds (roughly 5 oz) is a workable amount for this volume of liquid, but treat it as a guess rather than a transcription.
- The last line is cut offThe recipe breaks off at "Serve with", so the garnish is lost. Croutons or salted almonds would both suit a soup of this kind.
- White Stock IIIA pale, unroasted stock, seasoned but not browned. A light chicken stock, unsalted or lightly salted, is the modern equivalent; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will muddy the colour.
- Blanching and poundingPour boiling water over the almonds, stand two minutes, and slip the skins off. A food processor replaces the mortar, but grind dry first, then add the water a spoonful at a time — you want a smooth paste, not almond butter that has broken into oil.
- Scalded milkMilk heated to just below boiling, until it shivers at the edges. With pasteurised milk much of the original reason for scalding falls away; warming the milk before it goes in is mainly a matter of not chilling the soup. Warm is sufficient.
- Straining"Rub through a sieve" is the whole texture of the dish. Press hard with a ladle, then discard the almond and celery solids; the fine grounds that pass through are what gives the soup body. A conical strainer or a chinois does this better than a colander.
- Don't boil after the creamOnce milk and cream are in, hold the soup below a simmer. Almond solids scorch on the bottom of a thin pan, and the flour is already cooked, so there is nothing to gain from further boiling.
- YieldRather over a quart finished, after an hour's simmering and sieving; serves four to six as a first course. Season at the very end -- the stock, and the salt already worked into the almond paste, both carry over.
Almond soups belong to a long European line running back through medieval and early modern cookery, when pounded almonds and their milk were the standard enrichment for fast days and for households that wanted a pale, delicate dish without dairy. By the time The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book appeared in 1896, the almond had lost its religious function and become a flavour, folded into the book's rigorously systematised cream soup formula: a butter-and-flour roux, a measured quantity of stock, scalded milk, cream, and a sieve. Fannie Farmer's contribution to American cooking was less any single dish than that structure — the numbered White Stock, the level tablespoon, the assumption that a cook works from a printed measure rather than a handful — and this soup is a good illustration of an old idea run through the new machinery. The mortar called for here was standard equipment in a well-fitted kitchen of the period; grinding nuts by hand was routine work, not a flourish.