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Creme Aurore
Open a pint can green asparagus tips, drain and save the liquor Place the tips in a saucepan with half ounce melted butter and cook for ten minutes, then mash the tips with a wooden spoon in the pan. Moisten with one and a half quarts broth or water and the liquor of the asparagus, adding one minced onion, two cloves and two branches parsley. Season with one and a half teaspoons salt and slowly boil for thirty minutes; add a pint of tomato sauce; mix a little. Mix in another saucepan one ounce butter with two ounces flour for two minutes, then add the soup to this pan, with half pint milk, mix well and let boil for ten minutes. Season with half teaspoon salt, teaspoon sugar and two saltspoons cayenne pepper; mix well. Dilute two egg yolks with one gill cream and add to the soup with half ounce butter. Mix while heating for five minutes, remove, strain through a sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into a tureen and serve.
A classical rose-tinted cream soup built in three stages: an asparagus broth, a light roux, then an egg-and-cream liaison. Most of the risk lies in the last five minutes.
- Never let it boil after the yolks go inOnce the yolks diluted with cream are added, hold the soup between 160 and 180F, stirring, until it thickens slightly. A boil will scramble the yolks into threads that no amount of straining will fully rescue.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of cayenne is half a teaspoon in about two quarts of soup, which is assertive; start with a quarter teaspoon and add at the end.
- Tomato sauce means the classical sauceIn a kitchen of this period this is a cooked tomato sauce, usually thickened with a roux, not ketchup and not a jarred pasta sauce. Canned tomato purée loosened with broth is the closest quick substitute; anything sweetened or heavily herbed will throw the soup off.
- Canned asparagus is the point, not a compromiseThe recipe depends on the canning liquor for flavour, so drain it into a cup rather than the sink. If you use fresh asparagus, simmer the trimmings in the broth and expect a greener, less mellow result.
- Building the rouxCook the butter and flour two minutes without colouring, then add the hot soup a ladleful at a time, whisking, before pouring in the rest. Dumping two quarts of hot liquid onto a raw roux at once is how you get lumps that survive the sieve.
- The double strainPushing through a sieve removes the onion, cloves and parsley stems; the cheesecloth pass catches asparagus fibre and any grain from the eggs. Skip the second pass and the soup is still good, just not smooth in the way the recipe intends.
- YieldAbout two quarts finished, serving eight as a first course. It does not reheat well once the liaison is in, so warm leftovers gently and never above a simmer.
Aurore is French for dawn, and in the classical repertoire the name marks any pale sauce or soup flushed rose by tomato: sauce aurore is a velouté or béchamel tinted with tomato, and this soup is the same idea in liquid form, with asparagus supplying the base flavour. It belongs to the era when a kitchen judged a cream soup by its colour and its smoothness as much as its taste, hence the two strainings and the egg-and-cream liaison finished off the heat. The reliance on a pint can of asparagus tips is worth noting: canned vegetables were evidently respectable enough to appear in an ambitious restaurant-style soup.