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LENTIL SOUP (a la Soubise)
To a lentil soup made as above add a puree of onions made as follows. Slice up four large onions, and fry them brown in a little butter, then boil them in some of the broth of the soup till they are tender. Rub them through a wire sieve and add them to the soup.
A short addendum rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already made the book's basic lentil soup and simply builds an onion puree into it. The technique is sound and needs little more than a few conversions of equipment and expectations.
- "Made as above"The base is the book's own plain lentil soup, which is not reproduced here. Any lentil soup made with brown, green or Puy lentils works; red lentils collapse to a thinner, sweeter base and change the character.
- The hinge: brown the onions properlyThe whole point of the addition is the fried onion, not raw onion sweetness. Take four large onions to a deep even brown over medium heat in butter, 25 to 35 minutes, stirring so the sugars colour rather than scorch. Rushed pale onions give a flat, faintly raw soup; burnt ones turn it bitter and nothing later will fix either.
- Boiling in the brothLadle out enough soup liquid to cover the onions and simmer 15 to 20 minutes until they are completely soft. Returning that liquid to the pot means none of the flavour is lost.
- Sieve or blenderA wire sieve and a wooden spoon was the Victorian route to smoothness. A stick blender does the same in seconds; pass the puree through a fine sieve afterwards if you want the silky texture the original intends.
- Butter quantityThe original says only "a little butter". For four large onions, allow enough to keep them moving -- an ounce or two -- as less than that and they stick before they colour.
- Seasoning at the endOnion puree dilutes the soup's salt and thickens it. Taste after the puree goes in and adjust for salt, white pepper and a spoonful of cream or a squeeze of lemon to lift it.
- YieldThe onion puree adds roughly half a quart to whatever quantity of lentil soup you began with.
Soubise in French cookery means, near enough, onion: a soubise sauce is onions cooked soft and sieved, usually bound with béchamel or rice, and the name is traditionally attributed to the household of the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise, whose kitchens were credited with the preparation. By the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled in late Victorian Britain, à la Soubise had become shorthand in English kitchens for anything carrying that onion puree, and it was applied freely to soups, cutlets and eggs. The entry's brevity is characteristic of the book's method: recipes are built as variations on a base, so a cook who had mastered plain lentil soup could produce a dozen named versions from it. Lentils themselves were an inexpensive, filling staple of the period's economical cookery, and the onion puree was the cheapest possible way to give a frugal soup the vocabulary of a French menu.