Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Barley Cream Soup
Barley Cream Soup
Mix in a saucepan in the following proportions: Some barley (one teacupful) an onion, a small piece of cinnamon, half a blade of mace, and three pints of chicken broth. When it comes to a boiling point, remove to one side of the fire, and let it simmer slowly for five hours. Then pass it through a fine hair sieve, returning it to the saucepan. Mix with it two tablespoonfuls of butter and half a pint of boiling milk, or if cream is used in place of milk, the butter may be omitted; season to taste with pepper and salt. Beat the yolks of four eggs in a teacupful of milk; mix this in the soup, and stir by the side of a fire for a few minutes, but do not allow it to boil after the eggs are added. Turn the soup into a tureen and serve with a plate of sippets of roast or croutons of fried bread.
A classic velvet dash a barley purée finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The one thing that will ruin it is heat: once the yolks go in, the soup must never boil or it will curdle into grainy threads.
- TeacupfulA teacup of this period is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, so roughly 3/4 cup of pearl barley. If the pints are American measure, three pints is 6 cups; an imperial pint would make it about 7.5. Expect to top it up as it reduces.
- Five hours is far too longFive hours is far longer than needed -- pearl barley is fully soft in 45 to 60 minutes, and hulled barley in about 90. The long simmer suits a fire where a pot can sit off to one side all afternoon; at home, simmer until the grains collapse, then purée.
- Removing to one side of the fireThis means a gentle simmer, not a boil — around 195–205F. On a modern burner, the lowest setting with the lid ajar.
- A hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve, pushed through with a wooden pestle. A food mill, or a blender followed by a fine-mesh strainer, gives the same smooth result faster. Fish out the cinnamon and mace before you purée.
- Half a blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold whole as "blades" or ground. Half a blade is very roughly 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace. Note that the recipe simmers it with the barley from the beginning rather than adding it at the end.
- The egg liaisonTemper the yolk-and-milk mixture with a ladle of hot soup before it goes into the pot, then hold the soup between 160 and 175F, stirring, until it just thickens. Above about 180F the yolks scramble.
- Butter or creamThe recipe offers a choice: two tablespoons of butter with half a pint of boiling milk, or cream in place of the milk, in which case it says the butter "may be omitted".
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, either dried in the oven with the roast or fried in butter. Serve them alongside rather than in the bowl so they stay crisp.
- YieldAbout 6 cups after straining and enriching — four to six first-course servings.
Cream soups of this kind thickened with grain, sieved smooth, then bound with egg yolks and cream were a mainstay of the first course in late nineteenth-century hotel dining. Barley was the humblest of the thickeners, and barley water and barley broth had long been invalid food in English and American households, which is part of why this version leans on chicken broth, mace and cinnamon rather than on anything assertive. The egg-yolk liaison is the classic French finish for a soup of this type, and the recipe shows hotel cooking doing it the laborious way.