[Sca-cooks] Biersuppen

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 30, 2007, at 1:25 PM, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

> I haven't tried it, but I note that someone on the web has:
> http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Beer%20soup
>
> Beer soup
> Categories: Soups
> Yield: 1 Servings
> 1 		Bottle of beer
> 4 	ounce 	Sugar
> 4 		Egg yolks
> 1 	ounce 	Butter
> Mix beer with yolks and sugar in a jug. Pour into saucepan and beat  
> with
> rotary whisk, until it boils. Remove from heat at boiling point, add
> butter and serve with a garnish of parsley and paprika. Taken from:
> Early Settlers Household Lore - Sovereign Hill Ballarat.
> By Léon Brocard / Last updated January 2007
>
> I'm thinking that if you mixed the beer with the eggs before  
> heating, it
> _should_ thicken evenly, rather than scrambling... but I don't know.
> Master A, what do you think?

I suspect that both the beer and the sugar would help keep it from  
curdling to some extent (both by diluting and in some mysterious way  
akin to sugar being used as a dough conditioner in cookies, and to  
tenderize cured meats), but unless my intention was to make it  
curdle, I'd be very careful about boiling it for any period of time.  
The stirring will just make smaller curds if you let the temperature  
get too high, I suspect. It will have done all the thickening the  
eggs are going to do by the time it reaches 140 degrees F or so, so  
maybe the intent is to cook off the alcohol. One of the reasons I  
wanted to do the heat-the-non-egg-liquids-first thing was to cook off  
the alcohol so the eggs wouldn't have to be boiled.

And then, of course, some wine and beer products are actually better  
without the alcohol boiling away (zabaglione being one of them),  
assuming one is able to consume such things.

A.


"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?"
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