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Wine Soup
Put the yolks of twelve eggs and the whites of six into an enameled saucepan and beat them thoroughly, pour in one and one-half breakfast cupfuls of water, add six ounces of loaf sugar, the grated yellow rind and strained juice of a large lemon, and one and one-half pints of white wine. Whisk the soup over a gentle fire till frothed and on the point of boiling, then move it off immediately, turn it into a soup tureen and serve with a plate of small sponge cakes or fancy biscuits. The soup may be served as soon as ready, as the froth will soon go down.
This is a hot wine sabayon served in a tureen — closer to zabaglione than to anything a modern diner would call soup. The whole dish stands or falls on heat control.
- Never let it boil"On the point of boiling" means the froth swells and thickens well below a simmer; past that the yolks scramble and the soup breaks into grains and liquid. A stainless bowl over barely simmering water gives far more control than direct heat.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, generally taken as 8 to 10 fluid ounces. One and a half of them is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of water; the exact figure is not critical here.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in cones or blocks, to be crushed before use. Six ounces of granulated sugar, a scant cup, is the equivalent.
- Enameled saucepanThe instruction is about chemistry, not nostalgia. Lemon juice and wine will pick up metallic flavours from bare aluminium or unlined copper, so use enamel, glass or stainless.
- The wineThe recipe specifies only "white wine"; something light and dry to off-dry suits the sugar and lemon. One and a half pints is three cups. A big oaked Chardonnay will read as harsh here; a Riesling or dry Muscat works better.
- EggsTwelve yolks and six whites; period eggs may have run smaller than today's large eggs, so judge by consistency. Whatever the whites contribute, the froth will subside quickly, as the recipe itself says.
- Yield and serviceA quart and a half or so of liquid, whisked up to a foam that settles again quickly. Enough for six to eight servings. Warm the tureen and the cups first, and carry it to the table the moment it comes off the heat -- the recipe's closing line is a warning, not a suggestion.
Weinsuppe, or Weinschaumsuppe, was a fixture of German and Austrian menus in the nineteenth century, and its close relations run through European cooking wherever egg yolks, sugar and wine are whipped hot: Italian zabaglione, French sabayon, Alsatian and Swiss wine soups. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel and the compiler of the 1896 volume, was Swiss-born and worked in a hotel trade that ran on Continental convention, though the route by which any single dish entered the book is not documented. The sponge cakes or fancy biscuits served alongside suggest this is soup in the old European sense of something spooned from a tureen rather than a savoury first course.