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Soup Maigre
262. Melt half a pound of butter into a stewpan, shake it round, and throw in six middling onions sliced. Shake the pan well for two or three minutes, then put to it five heads of celery, two handsful of spinach, two cabbage lettuces cut small, and some parsley. Shake the pan well for ten minutes, then put in two quarts of water, some crusts of bread, a tea-spoonful of beaten pepper, three or four blades of mace, and if you have any white beet leaves add a large handful of them cut small. Boil gently an hour. Just before serving, beat in two yolks of eggs and a large spoonful of vinegar.
Another Soup Maigre. Cut two onions into very small slices, and put them into a stewpan with two ounces of butter; fry them a little,
A meatless vegetable soup thickened at the last moment with egg yolk and sharpened with vinegar. The whole dish hinges on the final liaison, which must not be allowed to boil.
- The egg liaisonBeat the two yolks with the vinegar and a ladleful of the hot soup first, then stir that back into the pan off the heat. Returning the pot to a boil after the yolks go in will curdle it into threads.
- Butter quantityHalf a pound of butter to two quarts of water is very rich by current taste. Four ounces sweats the vegetables perfectly well; the generous amount may be doing some of the work absent meat fat would otherwise do.
- Heads of celeryCelery of this period was generally a slender blanched bunch, smaller than a modern head. Five heads as written would swamp the pot -- two or three modern hearts, sliced, is the sensible reading.
- Cabbage lettucesFirm-hearted heading lettuces rather than loose leaf; a butterhead is the closest modern equivalent. They wilt to almost nothing, so the two called for are not excessive.
- White beet leavesThis is chard, sold as Swiss chard or silverbeet. Use the leaves and slice the white stems finely if you want them; they need a few minutes longer than the greens.
- MaceBlades of mace are pieces of the dried aril that encases the nutmeg. The whole blades can be fished out before serving and give a cleaner flavour than ground mace.
- Beaten pepperPeppercorns crushed in a mortar rather than finely ground -- coarser and more fragrant than fine pepper. A teaspoon is a lot; start with half.
- The bread crustsThey dissolve into the broth and are the only thickening besides the yolks. Stale, dry crusts work best; fresh soft bread turns pasty.
- YieldTwo quarts of water plus the vegetables gives six to eight servings. Salt is not mentioned anywhere in the original and the soup needs it.
Maigre is French for lean, and soupe maigre was food for fast days -- the Fridays, vigils and Lenten weeks when flesh was avoided. English cookery books took up the term in the eighteenth century, and in English usage it came to mean simply a vegetable soup with no meat stock. The butter and egg yolks suggest that a fast-day dish in the English understanding excluded meat but not dairy. The vinegar at the end does some of the work that a long-simmered bone stock would otherwise do, lifting a pot of sweet stewed alliums and greens into something with edges.