Imperial Soup
2 cups stale bread crumbs 2 stalks celery, broken in pieces 2 slices carrot, cut in cubes 1 small onion 3 tablespoons butter Sprig of parsley 2 cloves ½ teaspoon peppercorns Bit of bay leaf Blade of mace 1 teaspoon salt 1½ breast boiled chicken 1/3 cup blanched almonds 1 cup cream 1/2 cup milk 2 tablespoons flour Cook celery, carrot, and onion in one tablespoon butter five minutes; tie in cheesecloth with parsley, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and mace; add to stock with salt and bread crumbs, simmer one hour, remove seasonings, and rub through a sieve. Chop chicken meat and rub through sieve; pound almonds to a paste, add to chicken, then add cream. Combine mixtures, add milk, reheat, and bind with remaining butter and flour cooked together. 2½ lbs. lean veal
The ingredient list here has been garbled in transcription — the veal has drifted to the bottom, and the stock it makes is assumed rather than listed. Read it as a two-stage recipe: build a veal stock, then use it as the base for a thick almond-and-chicken purée.
- The missing stepThe 2½ lbs lean veal stranded at the end of the list is most likely the basis of the stock the method assumes, though nothing in the text says so and the line may belong to a neighbouring recipe. Read that way: simmer the veal in about 2 quarts of water for two to three hours, skimming, then strain; that liquid is the "stock" the method calls for. Veal shank or shoulder gives the gelatinous body the soup depends on.
- Two suspect quantities"1½ teaspoon peppercorns" and "1½ breast boiled chicken" look like corrupted fractions; half a teaspoon of peppercorns and half a boiled breast would be in proportion with the rest. Roughly 4 oz of cooked chicken breast and about ½ teaspoon of peppercorns is a safer reading than guessing upward.
- The hinge: sieve twice, patientlyThis is a purée soup with no blender behind it, and the texture is the whole point. A food processor followed by a fine chinois will do the work of the sieve, but the almond paste in particular must be smooth or the soup turns gritty.
- Almonds"Blanched" means skinned, not toasted. Pound or grind them with a spoonful of the cream to keep the paste from turning oily; ⅓ cup of whole almonds is about 1¾ oz.
- Blade of maceA blade is one piece of the dried aril from a nutmeg — reckon roughly ¼ to ½ teaspoon of ground mace if you cannot find whole. It is the flavour that separates this from a plain chicken cream soup, so do not skip it.
- Bread crumbs as thickenerStale crumbs here are structural: they swell during the hour's simmer and are then rubbed through the sieve into the soup itself, while the aromatics come out in their cheesecloth bag. Use dry, crustless white bread, not seasoned packaged crumbs.
- The final bindingCook the remaining 2 tablespoons butter with the flour into a pale roux before whisking it in, and keep the soup below a boil once cream has gone in. Boiled cream soup thickened this way separates and takes on a floury edge.
- YieldAbout 5 to 6 cups, serving four to six as a first course. It is rich enough that a small cup is the intended portion.
"Imperial" is sometimes grouped with a family of nineteenth-century soup names ed and Royale" \",