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Chicken Soup Colbert
5 cups well seasoned chicken stock 1 cup diced cooked asparagus, fresh or canned 1 teaspoon Karo, Blue Label 1 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 6 poached eggs Bring the soup to boiling point and thicken with the cornstarch blended with an equal quantity of cold water. Add the asparagus. Put the soup in plates and into each serving put a carefully poached egg. Dust with a little minced parsley or paprika and serve as the main course at luncheon or supper.
A clear soup thickened only slightly and finished with a poached egg in each plate. The whole thing hinges on the egg, so poach those first and keep the soup at a bare simmer.
- The one thing that mattersThe yolk should still be liquid when it reaches the table, because it is the sauce for the soup. Poach the eggs 3 minutes in barely trembling water, lift them into a bowl of warm water, and slide them into the plates at the last moment.
- Karo Blue LabelBlue Label was the corn syrup line of the Corn Products Refining Company, who published this book alongside Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch. One teaspoon in five cups of stock does essentially nothing but advertise; light corn syrup, or nothing at all, will do.
- ThickeningOne tablespoon of cornstarch to five cups of liquid gives a barely-there body, not a cream soup. Blend it with an equal quantity of cold water, stir it into the boiling stock, and let it cook a full minute so it loses its raw starch taste.
- Canned asparagusThe recipe offers fresh or canned as equal options, and canned spears were widely sold. Fresh asparagus cut in half-inch lengths and boiled 3 to 4 minutes is better here, and should go in off the heat so it keeps its color.
- Stock"Well seasoned" is doing a lot of work. Since there is no cream, no butter and almost no thickening, the stock is the dish; taste and correct the salt before the cornstarch goes in, as starch mutes seasoning.
- Serving vesselSoup plates, not bowls, and warmed, as the recipe directs. A deep bowl hides the egg.
- YieldSix eggs, so six servings as a light main course at lunch or supper. That is a little over three-quarters of a cup of stock per plate, enough to sit under the egg rather than swamp it.
Colbert is one of the old French garnish names, generally traced to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister to Louis XIV, and attached in nineteenth-century kitchens to a clear consommé finished with a poached egg and a small dice of vegetables. By the time it reached an American promotional cookbook it had been simplified considerably: canned asparagus stands in for the classic julienne of spring vegetables, and cornstarch replaces the long-reduced body of a real consommé. Books of this kind were published by ingredient manufacturers and given away or sold cheaply, which is why a teaspoon of corn syrup appears in a chicken soup that has no need of it. The dish itself is a genuinely useful piece of light-supper cooking, and a reminder of how much of the American home repertoire arrived as French restaurant cooking with the labor taken out.