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Cheese Soup
1/2 cup cooked diced carrots and carrot-juice + teaspoonful salt 1 cup grated cheese 1 egg 1 teaspoonful ground mace Little cayenne Cook milk in double boiler with carrots, adding spice and seasoning. When the carrots are very soft, strain and press through a sieve, pouring liquid on to a beaten egg, stirring carefully meanwhile. Return the soup to the double boiler, reheat, add grated cheese, and serve when this is melted.
A thickened cheese and carrot soup built in a double boiler, which is the whole point: milk, egg and cheese are all held below a simmer. The ingredient list as printed has lost its quantities in places, so treat the proportions below as a working guide.
- Missing milk quantityNo amount of milk is given, though the method calls for it. For roughly 1 cup of cooked carrots and 1 cup of grated cheese, 3 cups of milk gives a soup of pouring consistency; use less for something closer to a puree.
- Ambiguous small measuresThe salt and egg quantities are printed with stray characters rather than numbers. A half teaspoon of salt and one egg suit this volume, but the original intention cannot be recovered from the text.
- Do not let it boilThe hinge of the dish. Once the beaten egg goes in, the mixture curdles above about 180F, and the cheese will turn stringy and weep fat if pushed further. The double boiler is not fussiness; keep the water beneath at a bare simmer.
- Tempering the eggPour the hot strained liquid into the beaten egg in a thin stream while stirring, not the other way round. Adding a whole egg to a pan of hot milk makes threads of cooked white.
- Cheese choiceThe original says only 'grated cheese'; a firm aged Cheddar or similar would suit. Grate it finely and add off the heat in handfuls; pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch that dulls the texture.
- MaceGround mace is the outer aril of nutmeg, milder and more floral. A full teaspoon is assertive by current taste; half that is closer to modern palates, and freshly grated nutmeg is a reasonable stand-in.
- StrainingPressing the carrots through a sieve was the usual household puree method. A blender does it faster, but pass the result through a sieve anyway if you want the smooth body the recipe intends.
- The breadNothing in the printed method mentions bread; if the soup was intended to be served over dried bread cubes or toast fingers, the recipe does not say so.
- YieldAbout four cups on the proportions suggested above, serving four as a first course.
Cheese soups belong to a wider family of thickened milk soups, and the double boiler was a common household defence against scorched milk in an era of coal ranges with no reliable low heat. Mace was a conventional spicing for pale milk and cheese dishes in English cookery, valued because it perfumed without colouring, and cayenne with cheese is a familiar pairing in Victorian savouries.