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268. Take the bony part of a knuckle of veal, break the bones quite small, cover it close down in a pan, with a little mace, a few black and a few white peppercorns, just broken, a little turnip, carrot, onion, and celery; put in a quart of water, and let it simmer gently for three hours. Stir them together, and put in as much water as will make the quantity; put it through a sieve. When wanted to be used, put it into a pan with half a pint of good cream, and thicken with flour and butter. Boil a roll in the soup till quite soft; just before taking it up, have the roll rubbed through a sieve with a little of the soup, and just give it a boil in the soup to add to the thickness of it. Ir a French roll cannot be got, cut the crust from a common one, or it will discolour the whole.
Another. Take a shoulder or knuckle of veal, a piece of lean ham, a little mace, and an onion; boil them to a strong gravy; during the time put in a small bunch of pot-herbs for ten minutes; strain it, and let it get cold; boil a pint of good cream, and pour it upon the crumb of a penny loaf; let it stand some time and strain; blanch one ounce of sweet almonds, and beat them in a mortar with the yolks of four eggs boiled hard; mix them well together, and add them to the gravy; stir all over a slow fire, taking care it does not boil. Two ounces of vermicelli cut small is a great improvement. 269. A WHITE SOUP OF JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES. -The stock of
Two versions of an eighteenth-century white soup: a veal broth enriched with cream and thickened with bread. Neither is hard, but both depend on keeping the liquid pale and, in the second, on never letting it boil.
- The hinge: no boiling after the liaisonIn the second version the pounded almonds and hard-boiled yolks are stirred into the gravy off the boil; the recipe's own warning is "taking care it does not boil," since the enriched cream will split if it simmers. Keep the pan below a shiver -- in modern terms somewhere around 170-175F -- and stir until it coats the spoon.
- How much waterThe first recipe says a quart to start and then "as much water as will make the quantity" without saying what the quantity is. The quart is only the first charge; the cook is expected to make up the loss with more water after the three hours' simmering, to whatever amount is wanted.
- Veal knuckleAsk a butcher for veal shank cut across, bones sawn small. This is a gelatin broth, not a flavour broth, so the sawn bones matter more than the meat. Cut with chicken stock if veal is unavailable, accepting a thinner body.
- The French rollAn eighteenth-century French roll was, by most accounts, a small soft white bread roll with a thin crust, and here it doubles as a thickener alongside the flour and butter. A plain white dinner roll works; the instruction to cut the crust from any other kind is serious, since baked crust will fleck and grey the soup.
- A penny loafIn the second version this is a small plain white loaf; the weight of a penny loaf varied with the price of grain, so judge by eye. You want the crumb only, soaked in the boiled cream and then strained, as the recipe directs.
- Pot-herbs and macePot-herbs meant a small bundle of herbs or pot greens, commonly including parsley and thyme; ten minutes is deliberate, so lift it out. Mace is the outer covering of the nutmeg, sold as blades or ground, and a blade or two is a characteristic note in white soups of the period.
- Sweet almondsOrdinary blanched almonds. The distinction from bitter almonds mattered in this period because both were sold; only the sweet kind belongs here.
- Cream and flour-and-butterHalf a pint here is an English half-pint, nearer ten fluid ounces than a US cup. "Thicken with flour and butter" means flour kneaded into butter and worked into the hot soup in small pieces, which will not brown the soup as a cooked roux would.
- Yield and servingServing -- Neither version gives a yield; scale by how much stock you make up. Serve very hot in warmed bowls; the vermicelli suggested at the end goes in at the last minute, cooked just to tender.