Anyone who read my piece on potato soup (wonderful for breakfast too!) will note a liberalness with words relating to cream. Creaminess is a virtue I admire, mainly because cream is a foodstuff I adore. Now admittedly the creaminess of a potato soup is different to the creaminess of – well – cream. So what am I trying to get at.
Consistency, like single cream, should be perfectly smooth. This is admittedly an upshot of a pretty brutal blender which does not do subtlety. But what it also does is fold a fair bit of air into the liquid, adding a slight double cream thickness. Clearly richness of taste helps, which is why I am not averse to dumping (swirling, but it looks like dumping) cream into the mix. My swirling cream hand needs work, it never looks quite right, but it does add to the flavour.
I also like thin, lumpy soups. I like glutinous soups like Hot and Sour. And sloppy thick messes which are much closer to stews than soups. But creaminess, its a virtue in porridge, its a virtue in soups, it is even a virtue in congee: and THE virtue of cream.