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Bouquet Garni
Bouquet garni is the term applied to a bunch of herbs much used in soups and sauces, and wherever a savoury flavour is desired. It enters largely into the composition of many French dishes. To make a bouquet garni take a few branches of fresh parsley well washed, place upon this a sprig of thyme, a sprig of marjoram, a bay-leaf, a sprig of basil, a celery-leaf, a small piece of cinnamon stick, a clove of garlic, a small blade of mace, and a pepper pod. Fold the parsley round the other herbs, etc., and tie with string into a neat bundle, and use as directed in the various recipes.
A working component rather than a dish, and the version here is unusually spice-heavy for what most cooks now think of as a bouquet garni. A few notes on translating it.
- The hinge: it has to come out wholeThe whole point of the bundle is retrieval, so tie it tightly with kitchen twine and leave a long tail hitched to the pan handle. Small hard items — the mace blade, cinnamon, pepper pod — slip out of a parsley wrapping once it softens in liquid; put them in a square of muslin or a tea infuser tied into the bundle.
- "A pepper pod"In nineteenth-century usage this generally means a capsicum or chilli pod rather than a sweet bell pepper, though the entry itself does not say so. One small dried chilli is plenty for a pot of soup, and it can be left out entirely if the dish is not meant to carry heat.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold as whole "blades" or ground. A blade is roughly a piece the size of a thumbnail; about an eighth of a teaspoon of ground mace is the equivalent, though ground mace will cloud a clear stock.
- Cinnamon and garlicThe cinnamon belongs to an older habit of sweet spicing in savoury dishes and reads as assertive today; the garlic is unremarkable by comparison. For a plain stock or a white sauce, drop the cinnamon; for lamb, oxtail or a daube, keep it.
- Basil and marjoramNeither survives long simmering well, and basil in particular loses its freshness quickly in a hot pot. Add the bundle for the last half hour of a long braise, or accept the flavour as background rather than fresh.
- Dried herbs insteadIf fresh thyme, marjoram or basil are not to hand, use about a third the quantity dried, tied in muslin. Bay is one of the few herbs here that is arguably better dried.
- Quantity and yieldOne bundle of this size seasons roughly 2 to 3 quarts of soup, stock or braising liquid. Remove and discard it before serving; nothing in it is meant to be eaten.
- KeepingThe bundles freeze well. Make several at once when the herb bed is full, freeze them flat on a tray, and drop one in frozen.
Bouquet garni means simply "garnished bunch," and the technique is older than the phrase: cooks have been tying herbs into a retrievable parcel for as long as they have simmered pots that were meant to taste of herbs without containing bits of them. By the late nineteenth century the term had crossed into English kitchens as part of a broad enthusiasm for French professional method, and it is treated as a piece of technical vocabulary the reader must learn, like a roux or a mirepoix. What is striking is the length of the list. The modern classical formula is austere: parsley stalks, thyme, bay, sometimes leek or celery. Cassell's cinnamon, mace, garlic and chilli belong to an older English taste for compound spicing in savoury cooking, the same instinct that produced spiced beef and mulled sauces.