Norfolk Puree
1/2 cupful barley, pearl. 4 tablespoonfuls cooked carrot balls 1 quart water 3 pints white stock ½ cupful cream 1 yolk of egg 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 4 tablespoonfuls cooked peas Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste Diced toast or fried bread Put barley into saucepan of cold water, bring to boil, let boil five min- Now utes, then drain off water; this removes the slightly bitter taste. put barley into saucepan with Crisco and water, let these boil gently until let these boil gently until Soups barley is tender, drain, and rub through sieve. Add stock to this puree and let simmer ten minutes. Beat yolk of egg with cream and when soup has cooled slightly, strain them in. Stir soup over fire a few minutes to reheat; but be careful that it does not boil, or it will curdle. Season carefully, add carrot balls and peas, which should first be heated in a little stock or water. Serve with dice of toast or fried bread. If you do not possess a round vegetable cutter, cut the carrot into small dice. This is a particularly nourishing soup. If you prefer a slightly cheaper variety, use milk instead of cream, and if you have no white stock use milk and water in equal proportions instead, and cook a carrot, turnip and onion in milk and water for twenty or thirty minutes. 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 4 tablespoonfuls flour 2 quarts stock 1 lb. spinach
A barley cream soup with a beaten egg-and-cream liaison, garnished with carrot balls and peas. The whole thing hangs on the finish: once the egg goes in, the soup must never boil.
- The egg liaisonBeat the yolk into the cream, let the soup cool below a simmer, then strain the mixture in and reheat while stirring, holding it around 170-175F. Any boil scrambles the yolk and the soup breaks into curds that cannot be smoothed out.
- Barley quantityThe method calls for barley, though the ingredient list as printed gives no amount and does not say what kind. Something in the region of 1/2 cup pearl barley is a reasonable modern guess for 3 pints of stock and 1 quart of cooking water; much more will thicken the puree into porridge.
- Blanching the barleyThe five-minute boil-and-drain is worth keeping; the recipe's stated reason is that it removes a slightly bitter taste. The first water also comes off starchy, and discarding it gives a cleaner puree.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold. Butter or a neutral oil will do here, since the fat mainly enriches the barley as it cooks.
- MeasuresThe tablespoonful here is probably close to the modern tablespoon, and '1 1/2 cupful cream' means 1 1/2 cups. Three pints of white stock is 6 cups -- white stock is an unbrowned veal or chicken stock, so unroasted chicken stock is the closest substitute.
- SievingRubbing tender barley through a sieve is slow work. A blender or immersion blender gets there faster, though a pass through a fine sieve afterwards still catches the coarse bits and gives the velvet texture the recipe is after.
- Carrot ballsCut with a small melon baller, or dice as the recipe itself suggests. Cook them and the peas separately and add at the end so they keep their colour against the pale soup.
- YieldRoughly 2 quarts finished soup, serving six to eight as a first course. It does not reheat well once the egg is in; warm gently and never above a bare steam.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was Procter & Gamble's cookbook-as-advertisement for its new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and its recipes were largely conventional Anglo-American cookery with Crisco substituted wherever butter or lard would have stood. This soup belongs to the older European tradition of the puree thickened with a grain rather than a roux, finished with a liaison of egg yolk and cream -- a technique that dates back well before the book and that survives in classical French practice. The note offering a cheaper version with milk in place of cream and a milk-and-vegetable broth in place of white stock is characteristic of the book's audience: households running without a stockpot always on the range.