Claret Soup
Cook tvo tablespoonfuls of well washed rice in one pint consomme until tender. Add a pint bottle of claret and the yolks of four eggs well beaten. Sweeten to taste and stir until it begins to thicken, then serve at once.
A wine soup in the old European style — closer to a warm custard than to anything savory, despite the consommé base. The whole dish hinges on the eggs, which must thicken without setting.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the soup is a stirred custard. Keep it over low heat, or better a double boiler, and pull it the moment it coats the spoon — around 175°F. Above about 185°F the yolks curdle and no amount of whisking brings them back.
- Temper the yolksThe original has you add beaten yolks straight to hot liquid. Whisk a ladleful of the hot consommé and claret into the yolks first, then return the mixture to the pan. Same result, far less risk of scrambled egg.
- "A pint bottle of claret"Claret is the English term for red Bordeaux; any dry, medium-bodied red works. A modern bottle is 750 ml, about 25 fl oz, so use roughly two-thirds of it if you want the original balance of one part consommé to one part wine.
- A pint of consomméTwo cups. Canned or boxed beef consommé is the practical substitute, though it is saltier than a homemade one — taste before you sweeten, and consider cutting it with water.
- Cooking the riceTwo tablespoons of long-grain rice will take 20–25 minutes in the simmering consommé, and will drink up a fair amount of it. Top up with water or more stock so you still have close to a pint of liquid when the wine goes in.
- "Sweeten to taste"Start at two tablespoons of sugar for the full quantity and go up from there. Period versions of wine soup are noticeably sweet; a strip of lemon peel or a small piece of cinnamon simmered with the rice is in keeping.
- The alcohol staysThe wine is added at the end and never boiled, so much of the alcohol remains in the finished soup. Bear that in mind for children or anyone avoiding drink.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart — four modest cups. Serve immediately in warmed cups or bowls; it separates and skins over as it stands, and reheating will curdle it.
Wine soups belong to a continental tradition — German Weinsuppe, Scandinavian fruit-and-wine soups, and the sweetened broths long served to convalescents — that English and American cookbooks absorbed through their chapters on invalid cookery and formal dinner service. "Claret" is the old English trade name for the red wines of Bordeaux, in use since the Middle Ages and still the standard word in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s. The combination here is characteristic of turn-of-the-century soup chapters: a meat consommé used as a neutral base, rice for body, and egg yolks as the thickener.