[Sca-cooks] Biersuppen
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Tue Jan 30 05:24:25 PST 2007
On Jan 30, 2007, at 4:37 AM, ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:
>> From Rumpolt. 27. Biersuppen mit Eyerdottern
> su:eß gemacht/ vnnd mit Butter auffsieden
> lassen/ machs gelb oder nicht/ vnd wenns auffgesotten hat/ so
> saltzs ein wenig.
>
> (my translation, I could be wrong) Beer soup
> with egg yolks make sweet/ and with butter
> (auffsieden = boil?) /make yellow or not/ and
> when it has (auffgesotten =boiled?)/ salt a
> little.
>
> Has anyone tried this? Would "make yellow" mean saffron or perhaps
> safflower?
>
> How much alcohol is left in the soup, is it
> something we could serve at feast? What happens
> to the cook standing over the pan breathing the
> fumes? :)
>
> Modern recipes are quite similar, but usually
> have flour, milk, and cinnamon too.
>
> Ranvaig
The modern "cook's eye" would probably be looking for this to be a
smooth, fairly thin, buttery version of zabaglione. Sweet, either by
using a sweet beer or adding sugar, yellow, probably from saffron,
but depending on how much egg yolk is used and the type of beer, it
might be well on its way already.
This looks like a fairly recognizable version of what the
contemporary English would have called a caudle, so I may be drawing
some aesthetic inferences from that, but assuming that this is in the
family of zabaglione, stirred custards, caudles, and Bearnaise,
Hollandaise, and sauce beurre blanc, I'd do it that way.
You'd probably want to bring your beer to a boil (with or without
saffron, and as Bear suggests, you probably don't want to boil any of
this for any period of time), pour it in a thin, steady stream into a
bowl (or another pan) containing your eggs, beating them with one
hand while you pour with the other. The idea is to gently thicken and
cook the eggs as you mix them in to the hot beer, without causing
them to curdle. You may want to return the combined pot back to the
[very low] flame and continue stirring it until it has thickened a
bit more (it should probably coat the back of the spoon). Then you'd
beat in your butter in small increments as for Hollandaise, letting
the ambient heat of the soup melt the butter and completely
incorporating it before adding more.
I'd start experimenting with a pint of beer, maybe a double bock,
which is pretty heavy and more conducive to emulsions and such, and
you might not even need to sweeten it much, but any added sugar will
also thicken it just that tiny bit more that may make the difference.
Bring it just to a boil, then pour it in a thin stream into a bowl or
another saucepan containing about six large, beaten egg yolks (maybe
a small saucepan with a pouring lip might be useful here), beating
with a whip with the other hand. You may have to return it to the
flame -- very low heat, stirring constantly with a whip or a wooden
spoon-- to get it fully thickened, and then you start adding cold
butter, cut into small chunks of about a half-teaspoon each, probably
for a total of about two ounces, whipping in a piece or two at a
time, letting each increment melt and mix in before adding more. You
could add more, but eventually it'll become counterproductive, and
nobody will be able to eat more than an ounce or two of the stuff, I
suspect.
I think this would be great over sippets, but I have no idea if
Rumpolt would have done that.
Adamantius
"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils mangent de la
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them
eat cake!"
-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
"Confessions", 1782
"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry
Holt, 07/29/04
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