Home › Soups › Cream of Watercress Soup
Cream of Watercress Soup
Salt. 2 cups White Stock I, II or III 2 bunches watercress 3 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup milk Yolk 1 egg
What survives here is the ingredient list; the method was carried in the surrounding pages of the book, which gave one procedure for a whole family of cream soups. The proportions still work, but you have to supply the sequence.
- The missing methodOnly the ingredient list survives here. Cream soups of this family generally follow one pattern: cook the vegetable in the stock, press it through a sieve, thicken with a butter-and-flour roux, finish with milk and the egg yolk off the heat. Simmer the cress in the stock until tender, ten to fifteen minutes, sieve or blend, then rebuild.
- White Stock I, II or IIIWhite stock in books of this period is generally a mild, pale veal or veal-and-fowl stock; the three numbered versions are not reprinted here. A light unsalted chicken stock is the closest substitute; beef stock will overwhelm the cress.
- Two bunches watercressRoughly 6 to 8 oz, or about two supermarket bunches, stems included. The thick lower stems are fibrous but full of flavour, so cook them and rely on the sieve rather than trimming them away.
- The roux is deliberately thickThree tablespoons butter to two of flour is more fat than a standard roux. Cook it a minute or two without colouring, then add the hot liquid gradually; the surplus butter enriches rather than thickens.
- The egg yolkThis is the hinge. Beat the yolk with the 1/2 cup milk, add a ladle of hot soup to it to temper, then stir the mixture back into the pan off the heat. Returning it to a boil will curdle it into threads.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper appears in the list as printed here, whether by omission or because the surrounding method supplied it; season to taste at the end. Watercress turns bitter when overcooked, so taste before adding pepper.
- YieldAbout 3 cups finished soup, which is two generous servings or four small first courses. Double it comfortably.
Watercress reached American tables largely as a garnish and salad green in the nineteenth century, grown in running water near cities and sold in bunches. Its appearance here, in a soup chapter, reflects a common nineteenth-century habit of teaching one method and then running a long list of variations through it: cream of celery, cream of spinach, cream of watercress, all built on white stock, a roux and a yolk-and-milk liaison. The bare ingredient list is a symptom of that system, since the procedure lived a few pages earlier and was not repeated. The egg-yolk finish belongs to an older French tradition of the liaison, alongside the plain flour-thickened cream soups that could be reheated without splitting.