Hygienic Soup
6 cups White Stock III. 1/4 cup oatmeal. 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour Salt and pepper Heat stock to boiling-point, add oatmeal, and boil one hour; rub through sieve, add milk, and thicken with butter and flour cooked together. Season with salt and pepper. 4 cups White Stock III 1/4 cup farina 2 cups scalded milk
A plain invalid's soup — stock thickened with cereal, let down with milk and finished with a roux. The printed text is internally inconsistent, and that is the first thing to settle before cooking.
- Oatmeal or farinaThe ingredient list calls for 1/4 cup farina; the method says to add oatmeal. Farina (a fine wheat semolina, sold today as Cream of Wheat) is almost certainly meant, since the soup is to be sieved smooth. If you use farina, disregard the hour.
- The hour of boilingFarina swells and softens in ten to fifteen minutes and will scorch and turn gluey past that. An hour belongs to steel-cut oats, and the two cereals appear to have got crossed somewhere between the ingredient list and the method. Cook whichever grain you use only until it collapses, stirring often.
- White Stock IIIEarlier in the same book this is a mild, deliberately unbrowned stock based on veal and fowl. Any unsalted light chicken or veal stock stands in; avoid dark brown stock, which defeats the pale colour the recipe is after.
- SievingRubbing through a sieve was the usual way to get a smooth purée in a kitchen of this period. A stick blender does it in seconds, though a pass through a fine strainer afterward still improves the texture.
- Thickening twiceThe cereal already thickens the soup considerably. Cook the 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour together for a minute or two without colouring, whisk in a ladle of hot soup, then return it — and expect a fairly substantial result. Thin with more stock or milk if it sets up like porridge.
- Scalded milkMilk was scalded to kill off souring organisms in an unpasteurised supply. With modern milk it is optional, but warming it before it goes in still prevents the soup from dropping off the boil.
- SeasoningNothing here carries much flavour on its own. Salt firmly at the end, and a scrape of nutmeg or a little white pepper is in keeping with the style.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four as a first course or two as a supper in its own right.
"Hygienic" in a cookbook of this period suggests digestibility rather than cleanliness, and it points to the domestic-science movement that produced this book. The book gives a chapter to invalid cookery, where bland, smooth, starch-thickened soups were held to make the least demand on a weak digestion. Cereal soups of this kind — stock carrying a fine grain, sieved and softened with milk — were a common convalescent dish of the period, and the same logic runs through the era's gruels, barley waters and milk toasts.