No. 248

Cream of Asparagus with Croutons Souffles or Asparagus Tops

Creme d'Asperges aux Croutons Souffles ou aux pointes d'Asperges

Bend some small green asparagus, beginning at the root end, so as to break it off, keeping only the tender parts (two pounds); cut into one inch length pieces, wash well, changing the water several times, then drain and throw into boiling, salted water, continue the boiling for ten minutes, then drain. Put four ounces of butter into a saucepan; when very hot add the asparagus, and fry colorless on a quick fire; moisten with two quarts of broth, and when done, drain and mash; then pass through a fine sieve. Add one pint of veloute (No. 415) to the broth, color it with some spinach green or Breton vegetable coloring, season with salt, sugar and nutmeg, and just when serving thicken the soup with raw egg-yolks diluted in cream, and work in two ounces of butter (No. 175). Serve separately some croutons souffles made with pate a chou (No. 132) rolled in strings and cut in three-sixteenth of an inch lengths; these pieces to be rolled in flour, then rolled around in a sieve to make them round. Fry in hot fat; or asparagus tops may be served as a garnishing instead of the croutons.

← No. 247 Cream of Asparagus a la St. Vallier Soups & Broths No. 249 Cream of Barley, Vienna Style, or of Rice a →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's cream soups are built on a stock-and-velout/e base, finished with an egg-yolk liaison at the last moment. That final step is the one that decides whether the soup is silky or scrambled.

The liaison is the hingeWhisk the yolks with the cream, temper with a ladle of hot soup, then return it to the pot off direct heat and hold it below a simmer -- around 180F. Once it boils the yolks curdle and no amount of straining will bring the texture back.
Velout/e, in shortNo. 415 is Ranhofer's velout/e, a pale roux moistened with white stock and simmered until it coats a spoon. A pint of it thickens this soup; equal weights of butter and flour cooked pale, then whisked with 2 1/2 cups of stock and simmered 20 minutes, gives a workable stand-in.
Asparagus quantityTwo pounds reads as the trimmed weight of the tender parts, so start with closer to three pounds. Snapping at the root end finds the break naturally.
Ten minutes is for the period's asparagusThin modern spears are tender in three to four minutes of boiling; they then go into the butter only long enough to coat, since "fry colorless" means no browning at all. Overcooked asparagus turns olive and tastes of tin.
ColoringSpinach green is a homemade extract -- spinach leaves pounded, the juice heated until the green solids coagulate, then strained off. Breton vegetable coloring appears to have been a proprietary preparation and is not something you can buy now. A handful of raw spinach blitzed into the finished soup does much the same job.
Sieve or blender"Mash, then pass through a fine sieve" was the standard route to smoothness in an 1894 kitchen. A blender followed by a chinois is faster and removes the fibrous strings that make asparagus soup gritty.
Crou/tons souffl/esThese are not bread. Cho/ux paste (No. 132) piped into thin ropes, cut into 3/16-inch bits, rolled in flour and shaken round in a sieve, then deep-fried at 350-360F until they puff and hollow. They must be fried the same hour they are served or they go leathery.
Butter and seasoningFour ounces to sweat the asparagus and two more worked in at the end -- generous by current habit, and it can be cut by half without harming the soup. The pinch of sugar and grating of nutmeg are deliberate: sugar lifts the asparagus, nutmeg rounds the cream.
YieldTwo quarts of broth plus a pint of velout/e and the finishing cream give roughly ten small first-course servings.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the kitchen worked: nothing stands alone, and the reader is sent to numbered building blocks -- velout/e at No. 415, cho/ux paste at No. 132, the finishing butter at No. 175. Cream soups of this kind belong to the classical French repertoire Ranhofer brought with him, where a pur/eed vegetable is bound with velout/e and finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison rather than with the flour-and-milk b/echamel base later American cookbooks favored. The crou/tons souffl/es are fried cho/ux pearls that puff hollow, served apart so they stay crisp, and offered as an alternative to the plainer garnish of asparagus tips.