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Cressy (or Crecy) Soup
Wash clean, prepare, and slice eight carrots, eight turnips, eight small onions stuck with one or two cloves, a small tea-spoonful of celery-seed, bruised and tied in a muslin bag, and a slice of lean ham cut into pieces. Put these into a stewpan with a piece of butter the size of a large egg, move them constantly, and when they are nicely browned, add, a little at a time, three quarts of good stock (see STOCK). If it is necessary to use fresh meat, two pounds of the shin of beef boiled gently in four quarts of water for three hours will answer the purpose. Simmer until the vegetables are quite tender. Press them through a coarse sieve with the back of a spoon, return them to the saucepan, season with pepper and salt, and boil twenty minutes longer. The soup should be of the consistency of cream. A little boiled rice may be put into the tureen, and the soup poured on it. Time, two hours, if the stock or gravy be already prepared. Sufficient for eight or ten persons. Probable cost, 1s. 6d., exclusive of the stock or gravy.
A straightforward root-vegetable purée that lives or dies on the first stage in the pan. A few of the quantities and vessels need translating.
- The hinge: brown, do not scorchThe colour and much of the sweetness come from the initial frying of the carrots, turnips and onions in butter. Keep the heat moderate and the vegetables moving for 15-20 minutes until they are deeply golden at the edges; any blackening will make the whole tureen bitter, and there is no rescuing it once the stock goes in.
- Butter the size of a large eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Cookbooks of the period commonly sized butter against familiar objects, an egg-sized piece being conventionally reckoned at about 2 oz.
- Eight carrots, eight turnipsNo weights are given. Roughly 1.5 lb carrots and 1 lb turnips will serve, though note the recipe itself calls for equal numbers of each; if you want the carrot to lead, as the name suggests, weight it accordingly.
- Stock quantitiesThree quarts is about 3.4 litres in imperial measure. Note that the fallback stock as written — 2 lb shin in 4 quarts, simmered three hours — may well reduce below three quarts depending on how closely it is covered, so start with more water or top up; 2 lb of meat to 4 quarts will in any case give a fairly light broth.
- Celery-seed in a bagA teaspoon of celery seed is potent and can turn medicinal. Bruise it, tie it in muslin or a tea infuser as directed, and pull it out once the vegetables are tender. Two stalks of celery, chopped in with the other vegetables, is a milder modern equivalent.
- The hamA slice of lean ham means a seasoning, not a meat component — perhaps 2-3 oz. A piece of unsmoked gammon or a prosciutto end does the same job. Salt at the end, after the ham has given up what it will.
- SievingA blender or stick blender does in moments what the back of a spoon and a coarse sieve did slowly. Pass the blended soup through a sieve afterwards if you want the smoothness the original implies; carrot fibre survives blending.
- Consistency and the final boilThe twenty minutes' boiling after the purée returns to the pan will thicken it by reduction. 'The consistency of cream' is best read as single cream — pourable, coating the spoon lightly, not a purée you could stand a spoon in. Loosen with stock if it goes too far.
- Yield and servingEight to ten persons, as the recipe states. The rice is optional in the original — 'a little boiled rice may be put into the tureen, and the soup poured on it'; if you use it, a tablespoon or so in each warmed bowl with the soup poured over keeps the grains separate.
Crécy is the standard French culinary tag for a dish built on carrots — potage Crécy, Crécy garnish, carrots cut and glazed. The name is generally traced to the carrot-growing districts around Crécy-en-Ponthieu in Picardy or Crécy-la-Chapelle in the Brie, both of which have been claimed for it, though the association is traditional rather than documented; 'Cressy' is simply the older English spelling of the place-name, the form familiar from the 1346 battle, which accounts for the wandering spelling in this and other Victorian books. The instruction to serve it over rice reflects the French practice of garnishing purée soups with rice rather than flour, and the careful note of 'probable cost, 1s. 6d.' points to a book aimed at households that costed what the cook sent up.