Asparagus me, Domine 1

The asparagus looked so nice at the supermarket the other day, and it was only $2.99 a pound, so I couldn’t very well resist the temptation to do something with it.  The problem is that nobody but me likes asparagus.  (Perhaps I’ll get lucky and discover that M likes it too, but I haven’t tried her on it.)  Now I could have just steamed ’em and eaten them with a little lemon butter on top, but I’ve done that the last several times I had asparagus, and I wanted to try something different.

As it happened, I’d been rummaging through my cookbook collection the other day, and discovered that somehow I’d acquired two copies of The Williamsburg Art of Cookery.  And while I was flipping through them, trying to decide which one I was going to get rid of (answer:  the 1966 ninth printing, keeping the 1952 sixth printing), I found a couple of interesting-looking recipes for cream of asparagus soup.  One of them called for four bunches of asparagus and involved a chicken, and made something like a gallon of soup, but the other only wanted one bunch of asparagus, a bit of onion and celery, some cream and some broth, which sounded much more manageable.

The assembly turned out to be very easy, and it’s warming on the stove now.  I’ll check the outcome in a few minutes, but tasting as I cooked suggests that it might at most need a dab of salt.

Asparagus Soup

Wafh and remove the Tips from a Bunch of Fresh green Afparagus, and simmer them until tender in a little Milk.  Cut up the Stalks of the Afparagus, add a handful of Onion chopped and the same of Celery chopped, and boil about half an hour in a meat Broth to cover.  Rub through a coarfe Sieve, and place your pan over boiling water.  Add a rich cream Cream-fauce of melted Butter and Flour with Cream sufficient to make it thick.  Add the Tips laft, feason to taste, and ferve it forth.

Mrs. Mary Randolph’s Virginia Houfewife, 1831

Wash the asparagus.  Trim the tips and simmer them gently in milk in a small saucepan until they are tender, then set aside.

Peel the asparagus stalks and chop them coarsely.  Place in a medium saucepan with the chopped onion and celery, add the broth, and boil slowly for half an hour.  Purée the stalks, onion, and celery in a blender or food processor, then return to the broth and whisk together.

Make a white roux of the butter and flour, then add the cream.  Turn off the heat at once and whisk together briskly.  The sauce will thicken a great deal almost at once.  Add this to the asparagus purée and whisk together thoroughly.  Fold in the asparagus tips and milk very gently, and return to a low flame to heat through.  Season to taste with salt and white pepper.

(Update:  I was right; it needed some salt and a bit more white pepper than I first put in.  Definitely a winner of a soup.)

1 It helps if you know the antiphon Asperges me, domine.

Moses handled a threatened document for the Old Man of Berlin.  Fnord.