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White Soup
Put six pounds of lean gravy beef into a saucepan with one-half gallon of water and stew it gently until all the goodness is extracted, then take the beef out. Put into the saucepan with the liquor six pounds of knuckle of veal, one-fourth pound of ham, four onions and four heads of celery, all cut into pieces, a few peppercorns and a bunch of sweet herbs. Stew all these gently for seven or eight hours, skimming off all the fat as it rises to the top. Mix with the crumb of two French rolls two ounces of blanched and pounded sweet almonds, put them into a saucepan with one pint of cream and a little stock, boil for ten minutes, then pass them through a silk sieve, using a wooden spoon in the process. Mix the cream and almonds with the soup, then turn it into a tureen and serve.
This is a two-day, hotel-scale consommé thickened in the old style with almonds and bread rather than flour. The proportions are for a banquet; the method is sound but assumes a stockpot and a cook with time.
- Scale and yieldTwelve pounds of meat and bone will need a large stockpot, and the finished volume depends on how much water is added along the way; expect enough for a dozen or so as a first course. Halving everything works without changing the method.
- Gravy beefThat means lean shin or leg meat, cut for long stewing — beef shank, or chuck if shank is unavailable. Its job here is flavor extraction, and the exhausted meat that comes out is not worth serving.
- Knuckle of vealThe veal joint end, full of gelatin, is what gives the soup body and its pale color. Ask a butcher; veal knuckle or split veal shank bones are the substitute, and a pig's foot will supply similar gelatin if veal is out of reach.
- The water is not enoughHalf a gallon will barely cover the six pounds of beef, let alone carry the veal that replaces it through seven or eight hours of stewing. Cover the meat by an inch or two, top up with hot water as it reduces, and never let it boil hard — a rolling boil emulsifies fat and clouds a soup meant to be white.
- Heat and skimmingHold the pot at a bare shiver, around 180-185F, for the seven or eight hours. Skim faithfully; every bit of fat left behind will dull both the color and the finish.
- French rollsA soft white roll with a thin crust — a small baguette or a plain dinner roll. Use only the crumb, about 2 to 3 ounces, torn and left to soak; the crust would speckle the soup.
- Sweet almondsBlanched almonds, meaning skinned. "Sweet" simply distinguishes them from bitter almonds, which were once sold for flavoring and should not be used. Pound them with a little of the cream in a food processor to keep them from turning oily.
- Silk sieveA fine-mesh strainer or a chinois lined with muslin does the same work. Press with the back of a ladle rather than a wooden spoon if you like, but press hard — the almond and bread solids hold a great deal of the thickening.
- FinishingAdd the almond cream to the hot strained soup off the boil and bring it back only to a simmer. Season at this point; the original assumes the ham and the cook's palate will handle salt, and it will need it.
White soup belongs to the tradition of the medieval and Renaissance blanc manger family, to which it is generally traced, and in which pounded almonds and bread, not flour, gave a dish body and its prized pale color. By the eighteenth century it had settled into the form seen here, a rich veal and beef stock finished with almond cream, and it was the standard soup of a formal supper: in Pride and Prejudice, Bingley will not fix a date for his ball until Nicholls "has made white soup enough." Oscar Tschirky's inclusion of it in 1896 shows the dish at the end of its long run, still on the Waldorf's repertoire but already an heirloom beside the newer flour-thickened veloutés and cream soups that would displace it. The almond thickening is the tell of its age, a technique that outlived the reason for it — fast-day cooking, when dairy was forbidden.