Tuscany Soup
(Italy.) Peel and slice and fry 2 egg-plants, with 1 ounce of butter and as much flour, salt, pepper, a blade of mace, 3 large tomatoes, 4 mushrooms, some parsley, and then add 1 quart of consomme. Cook for 1 hour, press through a sieve, add 2 tablespoonfuls of grated cheese and 2 ounces of cooked macaroni. In Italy, the above mixture is baked in a dish, and a spoonful is added to every plate of consomme when serving, but the recipe as here given is better suited to American tastes.
A thickened purée rather than a broth, built on fried eggplant and finished with cheese and pasta. The instructions are compressed in the original; the order matters more than it looks.
- How the frying actually worksThe butter and the equal weight of flour make a roux in the pan; the eggplant and vegetables cook in it before the liquid goes in. Keep the heat moderate so the flour toasts rather than scorches, since burnt roux will carry through the whole sieved soup.
- Quantities in plain termsOne ounce each of butter and flour is about 2 tablespoons butter and 3 1/2 tablespoons flour. A quart of consomme is 4 cups; 2 ounces of cooked macaroni is roughly half a cup.
- EggplantEggplants of the period may well have run smaller than today's globe varieties; one large one, about 1 1/4 lb, should answer for two. Salting the slices for 20 minutes and blotting them is the usual remedy for bitterness and cuts the amount of butter they drink up.
- A blade of maceMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, sold as whole "blades" or ground. A blade is variously reckoned at somewhere under half a teaspoon ground. Fish the whole blade out before sieving.
- Mushrooms and tomatoesFour mushrooms probably means four small white caps, an ounce or two. Three large tomatoes should be peeled and seeded, or the skins will clog the sieve.
- The hour of cookingAn hour at a bare simmer, covered, keeps the volume; uncovered it will reduce noticeably and want thinning after sieving. Check the consistency once it is pressed through and loosen with more consomme if it has gone to paste.
- SievingA food mill, or a blender followed by a strainer, is far quicker than pressing through a sieve. Add the cheese and macaroni after sieving, not before.
- Cheese"Grated cheese" in an Italian soup of this period would most likely be Parmesan. Stir it in off the heat.
- YieldAbout 5 cups, serving four as a first course.
The note at the end is the interesting part: the author reports that in Italy the eggplant mixture was baked in a dish and a spoonful dropped into each plate of clear consomme, then declares the sieved version "better suited to American tastes." Foreign dishes are recorded and then quietly rebuilt as the thick, homogeneous soups American diners expected. The Italian original sounds like one of the many regional garnishes served in brodo, where the broth stays clear and the substance sits in it. Eggplant was still relatively unfamiliar in English-language cookbooks of the era, usually spelled "egg-plant" and treated as a Mediterranean or Southern vegetable; pairing it with tomatoes, mushrooms and grated cheese is a plausible enough Tuscan flavor set, though "Tuscany Soup" appears to be the compiler's label rather than a dish name anyone in Tuscany would have recognized.