Home › The Principles of Cookery › Marmite, Petite
Marmite, Petite
The petite marmite, or small stock, is of the same nature as the CROUTE-AU-POT, and is prepared in exactly the same way, being cooked in an earthenware stewpan, and strained into a smaller one. After this is done, add the shredded vegetable with some pieces of beef, wings, or other parts of fowl from the larger dish. Bring the smaller dish to table with a serviette pinned round it, or it may be divided into as many small marmites as there are guests, each of which can be boiled for a few minutes, and then served.
This is less a standalone recipe than a serving method, and it leans entirely on the entry for croûte-au-pot: a pot of beef and fowl simmered with vegetables. What follows fills in what the dictionary assumes its reader already knows.
- Read the cross-reference firstNothing here works without the parent recipe. Croute-au-pot is essentially a pot-au-feu: beef and fowl covered with cold water, brought slowly to a bare shiver, skimmed, then simmered for several hours with root vegetables. The broth is what you are after; the meat is the by-product that garnishes it.
- The vessel is the dishA marmite is a tall, straight-sided earthenware or copper pot, and petite marmite means the small one it is served in. Modern equivalents are individual lidded onion-soup crocks or small ovenproof stoneware pots. Cassell's earthenware stewpan gives slow, even heat; a heavy enamelled cast-iron pot does the same job.
- Clarity is the whole pointAvoid a rolling boil while the broth is cooking (the brief boil in the individual pots at the end is another matter). Fat and albumin emulsify into the liquid and the broth turns cloudy, which defeats a soup that depends on a clear amber consomme. Skim repeatedly during the first half-hour and strain through muslin.
- Shredded vegetableThis means the cooked vegetables from the large pot, cut into neat julienne or small dice, not raw. Cut them to a uniform size; the appearance of the garnish suspended in clear broth is what distinguishes petite marmite from ordinary bouillon.
- Wings, or other parts of fowlPull the meat from the boiled fowl in bite-sized pieces and discard skin and bone. Beef should be trimmed of gristle and cut small enough to eat with a spoon.
- Boiled for a few minutesThe final boil in the individual pots is only to reheat and marry the garnish, two or three minutes at most. Longer and the meat, already given hours in the pot, shreds to threads.
- Serviette pinned round itA napkin pinned round the pot is period service, and would also have shielded the hand from a hot vessel; a saucer or trivet does the same work now.
- YieldNo quantities are given here. A pot-au-feu on the scale of 3 lb beef, a small fowl and about 4 quarts of water would give roughly six to eight servings of clear broth with garnish. A toasted crust -- the croute of the parent dish -- is the usual accompaniment.
Marmite is simply the French word for the cooking pot, and the dish is named for its vessel rather than its contents — the same logic that gives us casserole and terrine. Petite marmite belongs to the family of French boiled-beef broths descended from pot-au-feu, the perpetual household pot; croûte-au-pot is the version served with a toasted crust, and petite marmite is the same broth dressed up for restaurant service in individual pots, a style generally traced to the Parisian bouillon houses and grand hotels of the later nineteenth century. Its appearance in a British household dictionary at all reflects the period's habit of treating French classical technique as the standard grammar of cooking, to be learned once and then cross-referenced.