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ITALIAN POTAGE (Brown Soup)
Take any young vegetables in season--turnips, carrots, celery, leeks, onions, etc. Slice three or four onions, and fry them in butter with two turnips, two carrots cut in ribbon-like strips, a head of celery, and the white part of a leek in inch pieces. Stew gently in the butter, letting them colour slightly. Add good rich veal gravy, salt to taste, and serve, when the vegetables are tender, on grilled crusts, previously moistened with a little of the gravy. Asparagus tops, green peas, and young lettuces improve this potage. Time, fry until the vegetables are tender.
A clear vegetable soup built on veal stock, closer to a French potage aux legumes than to anything thick. The quantities are left to the cook, so the proportions below are a starting point.
- The hinge: colour the vegetables, do not brown themThe recipe asks only for "letting them colour slightly." Sweat the sliced onions in butter over medium-low heat until they take a light gold edge, add the root vegetables, and keep them moving; scorched onion will make the whole pot bitter. The depth of colour in the finished soup will come largely from the veal gravy.
- Veal gravyHere "gravy" means unthickened veal stock, not a flour-bound sauce. A good brown veal stock is the closest modern equivalent; a light beef stock or a rich chicken stock will do, though the soup will be sweeter and less gelatinous. Allow about 2 quarts for the quantity of vegetables given, serving six.
- Cutting"Ribbon-like strips" of carrot and turnip suggests long thin strips rather than dice; a peeler or mandoline is the quickest modern way to get them. They cook fast and stay visible in the broth.
- TimingThe instruction to "fry until the vegetables are tender" is misleading if taken literally. Sweat them 10-15 minutes in butter, then add the stock and simmer 15-20 minutes more until the roots are just tender. Ribbons of carrot and turnip go to threads if held much longer.
- The green additionsAsparagus tops, peas and shredded lettuce should go in during the last three to five minutes only. Added at the start they lose their colour entirely and give the broth a stewed flavour.
- Grilled crustsSlices of bread, crust included, toasted dry under the grill as the recipe specifies. Moisten them with a spoonful of the hot stock and set them in the bottom of the bowls; the soup is ladled over. Modern croutons cut small work, but the original wants a substantial piece that softens without dissolving.
- SeasoningSalt is the only seasoning named, on the assumption the veal stock carries the flavour. If yours is thin, a bay leaf and a few peppercorns during the simmer, removed before serving, will not be out of character.
"Italian" here is a loose Victorian label for a vegetable soup served over bread rather than any dish from a particular Italian region. What the recipe actually describes is close to the widespread Italian practice of ladling broth over stale bread, often said to be the ancestor of zuppa in its original sense, where the word is generally taken to have meant the soaked sop rather than the liquid. The reliance on veal gravy places it firmly in a nineteenth-century professional kitchen, where a stockpot of veal bones ran continuously and every soup, sauce and braise drew from it.