Turkish Soup
One quart of stock; one-half teacup of rice; two eggs (yolks only); one tablespoon of cream; salt and pepper to taste. Boil the rice and stock together for twenty minutes, keeping the kettle tightly covered. Press them through a sieve, returning to the fire all that runs through. Add to this the cream, into which has been stirred the beaten yolks, and stir until it thickens but does not boil. Season and serve at once.
A simple velvet soup — rice cooked to collapse in stock, then finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The only difficulty is the last minute, when the yolks can either thicken the soup or curdle it.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmerOnce the yolks go in, hold the pot between 160 and 180F and stir constantly until it coats the spoon. At a boil the yolks scramble and no amount of whisking brings the texture back.
- Temper the yolks firstOne tablespoon of cream is not enough to protect two yolks from a quart of hot stock. Whisk the yolks and cream together, then dribble in a ladleful of the hot soup while whisking before returning the mixture to the pot.
- A teacupA teacup in books of this period is often reckoned at about three-quarters of a cup, though the measure was never standardized; on that reckoning half a teacup is roughly 6 tablespoons of raw rice. Any short or medium grain works; it is meant to break down completely.
- The stockThe recipe says only 'stock'; chicken or veal, lightly seasoned, suits it. Modern boxed stock is usually salty enough that you should season only at the very end, as written.
- Twenty minutes, coveredThe lid matters because a quart of stock will reduce noticeably in that time and the soup is thin to begin with. Check that the rice is thoroughly soft before sieving; underdone grains will not pass.
- SievingPressing through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle is still the best method for a clean texture. A blender or immersion blender gets there faster but leaves a slightly starchier, more opaque body.
- YieldA quart makes four modest first-course servings. It does not reheat well — the yolks tighten and separate — so make it to serve immediately, as the last line insists.
- Worth addingA squeeze of lemon at the table, off the heat, sharpens what is otherwise a very mild soup and is standard in the Turkish and Greek versions of the same egg-thickened idea.
Nineteenth-century cookbooks used "Turkish" loosely, as a label for anything Eastern-flavored, and this soup earns it mainly through its rice, rather than flour, as the body. The egg liaison itself is much older and thoroughly French in its kitchen pedigree, where a mixture of yolks and cream stirred into a hot liquid off the boil is simply called a liaison; the sieve, not the blender, was the only way to get the texture, which is why the recipe specifies pressing rather than mashing.