Strange though it may seem, in Hungary fruit soup is eaten as a soup, not as a dessert. If you look for Hungarian fruit soup in cyberspace, the first recipe that will certainly come to your way is cherry soup. This soup is referred to as a Hungarian summer treatment, which is served chilled. However, we Hungarians usually eat fruit soup hot and we use not only sour cherry, but any other available fruits. It’s best to make the soup with various fruits e.g. cherry, sour cherry, apple, plum, strawberry – what you can buy or you have in your freezer or pantry. You can use fresh, frozen or canned fruits – fresh fruits are obviously the right choice, but frozen products or preserves can be good alternatives, too.
Fruit soup is usually thickened with flour and sour cream, but I prefer to use cornstarch, egg yolk and cream. Egg yolks add consistency to the soup while maintaining a creamy, silky texture, but they will turn into scrambled eggs if they’re not introduced carefully into the hot liquid. You can’t just whisk them into the simmering soup – they would curdle on contact. You need to “temper” them by adding some of the hot liquid to the egg yolks, whisking the mixture together, and then adding it to the soup.
photo: zserbo.com
Ingredients:
- 3 apples, peeled and diced
- 3 handfuls of sour cherries
- pinch of salt
- 1-2 tbsp sugar
- 2-3 whole cloves
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- zest of a half lemon
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 200 ml (~3/4 cup) whipping cream
- 1 egg yolk
Place the fruits in a pot, pour in water, just enough to cover them. Add cloves, lemon zest, vanilla, salt and sugar, bring it to a gentle boil, and simmer for 5 minutes. In a small bowl whisk together cornstarch and a half cup of water. No lumps should remain in the mixture. Pour it into the soup and stir. Cook for further 1 minute. Meanwhile whisk together the whipping cream and the egg yolk. Ladle some hot liquid to the mixture and whisk together. Turn off the heat, and, while stirring continuously, in a fine stream pour the yolk-cream mixture into the soup (don’t cook or the egg will scramble). Let it cool a bit, and serve warm.
