Cream of Asparagus Soup

A clear, workable purée soup, though the original assumes you know how much asparagus to start with and how much of the cooking water to keep back.

• Quantity of asparagusNone is given. A pint of milk and half a cup of cream would suit somewhere around two pounds of asparagus, roughly two supermarket bunches, for about four modest servings.
• Cook the tips separately, and brieflyThis is the hinge of the recipe. The stalks want to be genuinely soft so they will pass through a sieve; the tips want three or four minutes so they stay green and intact when they go back in at the end.
• "Wash and rub them through a coarse sieve""Wash" here most likely means a rinse of the boiled stalks rather than a scrub. A food mill or a blender followed by a sieve does the same work far faster, and the sieving still matters because asparagus stalks are fibrous.
• The cooking waterAdd it gradually rather than all at once. Depending on how much water you boiled the asparagus in you may want only a cup or so, and the soup is easily thinned past the point of return.
• The rouxTwo tablespoons each of flour and butter rubbed cold into a paste is beurre manié. Whisk it into the scalding milk in small pieces and let it cook a few minutes, or the soup will taste of raw flour.
• "Sweet cream"Simply fresh, unsoured cream, as distinct from soured or cultured cream, which was also in use at the time. Heavy or whipping cream works well here.
• Very little sugarA quarter teaspoon at most. It is there to lift the asparagus, not to be tasted.
• Do not boil after the cream goes in"Let the soup get thoroughly hot" means just that. Held over direct heat a milk soup will catch on the bottom, and the double boiler at the start of the recipe is aimed at the same problem.
• The whipped creamUnsweetened, softly whipped, spooned on at the table. A cupful across four bowls is generous by modern taste; a spoonful each is plenty.