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Neapolitan Soup
Cut into rather small pieces, one-fourth of a raw chicken, put them into a saucepan with one ounce of butter, one ounce of lean raw ham, half a green pepper, half of a sliced onion and one sliced carrot, and stew gently for ten minutes; then moisten with three pints of white broth, season with one-half tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper and add one tablespoonful of raw rice. Let it simmer for fifteen minutes, or until about half-cooked, then put in one ounce of macaroni in small pieces, and half of a tomato. Boil again for ten minutes, and serve with two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese separately.
A light chicken and pasta soup built in a single pan, closer to a Neapolitan minestra than to a consommé. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the seasonings and one of the timings need adjusting for modern palates and modern ingredients.
- Cut the pepper backOne teaspoonful of ground black pepper in three pints of broth is aggressive by current standards, and the half tablespoon of salt assumes an unsalted stock. Start with a quarter teaspoon of pepper and half the salt, then correct at the end.
- White brothThis means a light, unsalted stock — veal or chicken bones simmered without browning, so the finished soup stays pale. A good low-sodium chicken stock is the practical substitute; avoid dark or roasted stock, which changes the character entirely.
- One-fourth of a raw chickenOn a bird of the period this is roughly 12 oz to 1 lb bone-in. Boneless thigh, about 8 oz diced small, gives much the same result with less picking; leave the bone in if you want more body.
- Ounces are weightsOne ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, one ounce of ham is a thick slice diced, one ounce of dry macaroni is a scant quarter cup. Weigh the pasta if you can — the soup goes stodgy quickly if you overshoot.
- Green pepperAlmost certainly a sweet bell pepper rather than a chile; that is the usual sense in American writing of the period, though the phrase was sometimes used of hot varieties.
- Watch the rice, not the clockFifteen minutes to half-cooked assumes long-grain white rice; the macaroni then finishes in the last ten. Taste before adding the pasta, and pull the pot the moment the rice is tender, since both will keep swelling in the hot broth.
- SkimRaw chicken and ham simmered in broth throw scum in the first few minutes. Lift it off before the rice goes in or the soup will look cloudy, which defeats the point of a white broth.
- Yield and the cheeseThree pints makes about four first-course servings. The recipe does not name the cheese; a hard grating cheese is the usual assumption. It is passed separately so it can be added at the table rather than sitting in the pot.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 volume is a working reference for a hotel kitchen, and its "Neapolitan" soups belong to the long nineteenth-century habit of naming dishes for cities to signal a set of ingredients rather than a fixed regional formula: here, tomato, macaroni and grated cheese. That trio was still read as distinctly southern Italian in New York in the 1890s, when large-scale immigration from Campania and Sicily was bringing dried pasta and tomato conserva into general American view, and hotel menus were beginning to borrow from them — often, it is said, at a safe, Frenchified distance. The construction of the soup, though, is thoroughly professional French — a sweated aromatic base moistened with white broth, starch added in stages — which may well be how the Waldorf's kitchen absorbed anything new. The cheese is served separately rather than stirred in, though passing grated cheese apart was standard French and hotel service as much as Italian.