Classic Italian Recipes: Soups
Traditional Italian soup recipes, including spring soup, Tuscan soup, and soup with risotto.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste, Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes for Italian Dishes by W.G. Waters, 1901.
No. 19. Clear Soup
Ingredients: Stock meat, water, a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley, chervil, bay leaf, basil, marjoram), three carrots, three turnips, three onions, three cloves stuck in the onions, one blade of mace.
Cut up three pounds of stock meat small and put it in a stock pot with two quarts of cold water, three carrots, and three turnips cut up, three onions with a clove stuck in each one, a bunch of herbs and a blade of mace. Let it come to the boil and then draw it off, at once skim off all the scum, and keep it gently simmering, and occasionally add two or three tablespoonsful of cold water. Let it simmer all day, and then strain it through a fine cloth.
Some of the liquor in which a calf’s head has been cooked, or even a calf’s foot, will greatly improve a clear soup.
The stock should never be allowed to boil as long as the meat and vegetables are in the stock pot.
No. 20. Zuppa Primaverile (Spring Soup)
Ingredients: Clear soup, vegetables.
Any fresh spring vegetables will do for this soup, but they must all be cooked separately and put into the soup at the last minute. It is best made with fresh peas, asparagus tips, and a few strips of tarragon.
No. 21. Soup alia Lombarda
Ingredients: Clear soup, fowl forcemeat, Bechamel (No. 3), peas, lobster butter, eggs, asparagus.
Make a firm forcemeat of fowl and divide it into three parts, to the first add two spoonsful of cream Bechamel, to the second four spoonsful of puree of green peas, to the third two spoonsful of lobster butter and the yolk of an egg; thus you will have the Italian colours — red, white, and green. Butter a pie dish and make little quenelles of the forcemeat. Just before serving boil them for four minutes in boiling stock, take them out carefully and put them in a warm soup tureen with two spoonsful of cooked green peas and pour a very fresh clear soup over them. Hand little croutons fried in lobster butter separately.
No. 22. Tuscan Soup
Ingredients: Stock, eggs.
Whip up three or four eggs, gradually add good stock to them, and keep on whisking them up until they begin to curdle. Keep the soup hot in a bain-marie.
No. 23. Venetian Soup
Ingredients: Clear soup, butter, flour, Parmesan, eggs.
Make a roux by frying two ounces of butter and two ounces of flour, add an ounce of grated cheese and half a cup of good stock. Mix up well so as to form a paste, and then take it off the fire and add the yolks of four eggs, mix again and form the paste into little quenelles. Boil these in a little soup, strain off, put them into the tureen and pour a good clear soup over them.
No. 24. Roman Soup
Ingredients: Stock, butter, eggs, salt, crumb of bread, parsley, nutmeg, flour, Parmesan.
Mix three and a half ounces of butter with two eggs and four ounces of crumb of bread soaked in stock, a little chopped parsley, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg. Reduce this and add two tablespoonsful of flour and one of grated Parmesan. Form this into little quenelles and boil them in stock for a few minutes, put them into a tureen and pour a good clear soup over them.
No. 25. Soup alia Nazionale
Ingredients: Clear soup, savoury custard.
Make a savoury custard and divide it into three parts, one to be left white, another coloured red with tomato, and the third green with spinach. Put a layer of each in a buttered saucepan and cook for about ten minutes, cut it into dice, so that you have the three Italian colours (red, white, and green) together, then put the custard into a soup tureen and pour a good clear soup over it.
No. 26. Soup alia Modanese
Ingredients: Stock, spinach, butter, salt, eggs, Parmesan, nutmeg, croutons.
Wash one pound of spinach in five or six waters, then chop it very fine and mix it with three ounces of butter, salt it and warm it up. Then let it get cold, pass through a hair sieve, and add two eggs, a tablespoonful of grated Parmesan, and very little nutmeg. Add this to some boiling stock in a copper saucepan, put on the lid, and on the top put some hot coals so that the eggs may curdle and help to thicken the soup. Serve with fried croutons.
No. 27. Crotopò Soup
Ingredients: Clear soup, veal, ham, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, rolls.
Pound half a pound of lean veal in a mortar, then add three ounces of cooked ham with some fat in it, the yolk of an egg, salt, pepper, and very little nutmeg. Pass through a sieve, cut some small French rolls into slices, spread them with the above mixture, and colour them in the oven. Then cut them in halves or quarters, put them into a tureen, and just before serving pour a very good clear soup over them.
No. 28. Soup all’ Imperatrice
Ingredients: Breast of fowl, eggs, salt, pepper, ground rice, nutmeg, clear stock.
Pound the breast of a fowl in a mortar, and add to it a teaspoonful of ground rice, the yolk of an egg, salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Pass this through a sieve, form quenelles with it, and pour a good clear soup over them.
No. 29. Neapolitan Soup
Ingredients: Fowl, potato flour, eggs, Bechamel sauce, peas, asparagus, spinach, clear soup.
Mix a quarter pound of forcemeat of fowl with a tablespoonful of potato flour, a tablespoonful of Bechamel sauce (No. 3), and the yolk of an egg; put this into a tube about the size round of an ordinary macaroni; twenty minutes before serving squirt the forcemeat into a saucepan with boiling stock, and nip off the forcemeat as it comes through the pipe into pieces about an inch and a half long. Let it simmer, and add boiled peas and asparagus tips. If you like to have the fowl macaroni white and green, you can colour half the force- meat with a spoonful of spinach colouring. Serve in a good clear soup.
No. 30. Soup with Risotto
Ingredients: Risotto (No. 189), eggs, bread crumbs, clear or brown soup.
If you have some good risotto left, you can use it up by making it into little balls the size of small nuts. Egg and bread crumb and fry them in butter; dry them and put them into a soup tureen with hot soup. The soup maybe either clear or brown.
No. 31. Soup alia Canavese
Ingredients: White stock, butter, onions, carrot, celery, tomato, cauliflower, fat bacon, parsley, sage, Parmesan, salt, pepper.
Chop up half an onion, half a carrot, half a stick of celery, a small bit of fat bacon, and fry them in two ounces of butter. Then cover them with good white stock, boil for a few minutes, pass through a sieve, and add two tablespoonsful of tomato puree. Then blanch half a cauliflower in salted water, let it get cold, drain all the water out of it, and break it up into little bunches and put them into a stock pot with the stock, a small leaf of dried sage, crumbled up, and a little chopped parsley, and let it all boil; add a pinch of grated cheese and some pepper. Serve with grated Parmesan handed separately.
No. 32. Soup alia Maria Pia
Ingredients: White stock, eggs, butter, peas, white beans, carrot, onion, leeks, celery, cream croutons.
Soak one pound of white beans for twelve hours, then put them into a stock pot with a little salt, butter, and water, add a carrot, an onion, two leeks, and a stick of celery, and simmer until the vegetables are well cooked; then take out all the fresh vegetables, drain the beans and pass them through a sieve, but first dilute them with good stock. Put this puree into a stock pot with good white stock, and when it has boiled keep it hot in a bain-marie until you are about to serve;
then mix the yolk of three eggs in a cup of cream, and add this to the soup. Pour the soup into a warm tureen, add some boiled green peas, and serve with fried croutons handed separately.
No. 33. Zuppa d’Erbe
(Lettuce Soup)
Ingredients: Stock, sorrel, endive, lettuce, chervil, celery, carrot, onion, French roll, Parmesan cheese.
Boil the following vegetables and herbs in very good stock for an hour: Two small bunches of sorrel, a bunch of endive, a lettuce, a small bunch of chervil, a stick of celery, a carrot and an onion, all well washed and cut up. Then put some slices of toasted French roll into a tureen and pour the above soup over them. Serve with grated Parmesan handed separately.
No. 34. Zuppa Regina di Riso (Queen’s Soup)
Ingredients: Fowl stock, ground rice, milk, butter.
Put a tablespoonful of ground rice into a saucepan and gradually add half a pint of milk, boil it gently for twelve minutes in a bain-marie, but stir the whole time, so as to get it very smooth. Just before serving add an ounce of butter, pass it through a sieve, and mix it with good fowl stock.
Waters, W.G. The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste, Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes for Italian Dishes. W. Heinemann, 1901.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
