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Cream of Chicken Soup
2 Quarts Chicken Broth 1 Cup Cream 2 Tablespoons Cornstarch Season broth with mace, salt, celery seed and pepper. Dissolve the cornstarch in the cream. Stir slowly into the hot broth and stir till it thickens.
A terse turn-of-the-century formula that assumes you already have a pot of chicken broth from the bird you boiled yesterday. Two things decide whether it works: the strength of the broth and the temperature at which you add the cream.
- The hinge: temper, don't dumpWhisk the cornstarch smooth into the cold cream, then pour it into broth that is hot but below a rolling boil, stirring the whole time. Cornstarch reaches full thickening just under the boil; a hard boil after it sets will thin the soup back out and can curdle the cream.
- Broth strengthTwo quarts of thin supermarket stock thickened with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch gives a pale, loose soup. The original assumes a rich homemade broth from a whole fowl. Either use a well-reduced stock or expect to reduce the two quarts by a third before you begin.
- MaceGround mace is the aril, the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, and is usually described as milder and more floral than nutmeg. It turns up frequently in period white soups and sauces. About 1/4 teaspoon for two quarts; nutmeg can stand in, used sparingly.
- Celery seedPotent and bitter in quantity. Start with 1/2 teaspoon, bruised, and strain it out before serving, or use a couple of stalks of celery simmered in the broth instead.
- CreamCream of this period was not standardised and varied with how it was separated, but much of it sat closer to today's light cream or half-and-half than to heavy whipping cream. Heavy cream works and gives a richer soup; use a little less if you do.
- Cornstarch lumpsIf the cream is cold and thoroughly whisked, there will be none. If lumps appear anyway, push the finished soup through a fine sieve rather than beating it, which only breaks down the starch further.
- YieldTwo quarts serves six to eight as a first course. The soup thickens further as it cools and will need thinning with broth on reheating; reheat gently and do not boil.
Cream soups of this kind were the backbone of the genteel American dinner from the 1880s through the 1920s, and their spread owes a good deal to cornstarch. Commercial cornstarch, manufactured in the United States from the 1840s, gave home cooks a cheap, neutral thickener that produced a smooth white liaison without the flour taste of a roux or the labor of a pounded almond or bread thickening, which is how earlier "white soups" got their body. Books aimed at new housekeepers taught thrift as much as cookery, and a cream soup was the standard way to turn the broth left from a boiled fowl into a separate course the next day. The mace-and-celery-seed seasoning is very much of its period, when white dishes were expected to stay white — though it is only an inference that cooks chose pale spices to avoid speckling the bowl.