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Asparagus Soup (Heads asparagus tablespoonfuls)
40 heads asparagus 3 tablespoonfuls flour 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1/2 cupful cream 1 quart white stock 1 bunch herbs 1 bay leaf 4 sprigs parsley 2 egg yolks 1 blade mace Salt and white pepper to taste 1 onion Take heads off asparagus, and put aside. Cut up stalks in slices, also onion, put these into saucepan with Crisco, herbs, parsley, bay leaf, and mace, and fry gently for fifteen minutes, add flour, then stock, and simmer slowly for 1½ hours. Rub through sieve, add cream, yolks of eggs, and seasonings, reheat, but take care not to boil soup. Just before serving throw in asparagus tops, which should be first cooked in a little boiling stock. Soups 4 tablespoonfuls grated cheese
A classic veloute-style asparagus soup, thickened first with a roux and then finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The finishing is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: the liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the soup must not boil or the yolks will curdle into threads. Hold it below about 180F, stirring, and take it off the heat as soon as it thickens and coats the spoon.
- CriscoCrisco is vegetable shortening, and in 1913 the book was selling it as a substitute for butter and lard. Three tablespoons of butter gives a better flavour here; a neutral oil works if you want it dairy-free apart from the cream.
- "40 heads asparagus"This means 40 spears, not 40 tips; depending on thickness that is somewhere around a pound and a half to two pounds. The tips are reserved for garnish and the stalks carry the soup.
- White stockA pale unroasted stock of veal or chicken bones. Any light chicken stock will do; avoid dark or heavily reduced stock, which muddies the colour.
- Bunch of herbs, blade of maceThe "bunch of herbs" is a bouquet garni - thyme, parsley stalks, perhaps a leek green, tied so it can be pulled out. A blade of mace is one piece of the lacy husk of nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes. Remove all whole aromatics before sieving.
- Cut the simmering timeAn hour and a half destroys asparagus flavour and turns the colour grey-brown. Thirty to forty minutes is enough to soften the stalks and cook out the flour.
- SievingA blender or immersion blender does the work of the sieve, but asparagus is fibrous - pass the puree through a fine strainer afterwards or the soup will be stringy.
- TipsCook the reserved tips separately in a little stock only until just tender, two to four minutes, and add them at the last moment so they stay green.
- Yield and the stray lineServes four to six as a first course. The "4 tablespoonfuls grated cheese" at the end, along with the intruding word "Soups", appears to be stray text from an adjacent recipe rather than part of this one.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook issued by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a product new to the kitchen. The strategy was to print respectable, largely French-derived recipes and simply write Crisco in wherever butter or lard would have stood - which is why this soup follows the standard nineteenth-century method for a cream soup, roux and white stock and an egg-yolk liaison, with the shortening slipped into the position butter had held for generations. Asparagus soup itself was a fixture of English and American genteel cookery well before this, and it is often said to have been valued because the woody lower stalks that were too tough to serve at table could be simmered down and sieved, leaving the tips for garnish. The recipe is thrift dressed as elegance.