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Quick Veal-and-Sago Soup
1 lb. lean veal, chopped. 1 carrot cut in pieces. 1 small onion. 1b. lean veal, chopped I carrot cut in pieces I small onion 1 egg Soup celery and parsley 2 tablespoonfuls sago 1½ cups scalded milk Salt and pepper I Cover veal with cold water, add carrot, onion, celery, parsley, salt, and pepper. Heat gradually and boil one hour. Strain. Soak sago in water half an hour, strain, add to soup, and cook until sago is clear. Add milk and more seasoning if necessary. Beat egg, place in tureen, pour soup over it, stirring well.
Veal on Toast Cut cold roast veal into small pieces. Prepare slices of crisp, dried toast and place on a platter in the oven. Take some of yesterday's left-over veal gravy, thin it with an equal quantity of hot water, and pour into a frying-pan. Let the gravy の boil. Just before serving add the cold veal; heat thoroughly, but do not boil. Place meat on the toast, pour gravy around it, and garnish dish with thin slices of lemon.
A thrifty second-day soup that turns a pound of veal and a spoonful of starch into a light, creamy first course. The whole thing hangs on the egg finish, which needs care.
- The meat quantityThe ingredient line reads "1b. lean veal" and means one pound, chopped or ground. Cold cooked veal can be substituted, though raw veal gives a better-flavoured broth.
- Boiling an hourHold it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. Hard boiling clouds the broth and drives the flavour out of the meat before the hour is up; skim the grey foam in the first ten minutes.
- SagoSmall pearl sago from a palm starch, sold in Asian and South Asian groceries. Small pearl tapioca is the closest substitute in the same quantity. Soaking softens it so it cooks through quickly; "clear" means the white centre of each pearl has disappeared, usually 10 to 15 minutes.
- Scalded milkHeat to just below boiling, around 180F, where the surface shivers and a rim of bubbles forms. Add it off a hard boil so it does not curdle against the salted broth.
- The egg liaisonThe hinge of the recipe. Beat the egg well, then pour the soup over it in a thin stream while stirring constantly, or it will set into threads. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use a pasteurised egg; the soup thickens the egg but does not reliably hold it at a safe temperature.
- Do not reheat after the eggOnce the egg is in, the soup cannot go back on the heat without scrambling. Warm the tureen first and serve straight away.
- Soup celeryOlder, coarser celery stalks with plenty of leaf, kept for the stockpot. A couple of outer ribs and their tops do the same job.
- YieldAbout four small first-course servings, or three as a light supper with bread.
Sago reached British and American kitchens as a cheap invalid starch, valued because it thickened without the richness of cream or egg alone, and cookery books of the period are often said to have recommended veal broth on the same grounds: mild, pale and thought to be easily digested. The pairing here is a straight descendant of that sickroom tradition, dressed up for the table with milk and an egg liaison. Its appearance in a book about left-overs is characteristic of the household economy of the period, when the bones and trimmings of a roast were expected to reappear as the next day's soup rather than go to waste.