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Parmentier Soup
Slice ten large potatoes, blanch them, stew them in stock with two leeks and head of celery tied together, and the crumb of a French roll. When the potatoes break under the pressure of the finger, rub them through a sieve; mix with a sufficient quantity of stock, add a pinch of sugar and a little nutmeg. Return to the pot, and bring to boiling point; mix in a pint of milk, a third of a pint of cream, and a pat of fresh butter. Pour into a hot tureen, and serve with sippets of toast.
A plain potato and leek purée thickened with bread, from the era before blenders. The one thing to get right is the sieving: potato worked too hard turns to glue.
- Use a ricer or mouli, not a blenderHigh-speed blades rupture the starch granules and the soup turns gummy and elastic. A food mill, potato ricer or the original sieve and wooden spoon all give the right texture.
- Pull out the bundle firstThe leeks and celery are tied together so they can be lifted out before the potatoes go through the sieve. The recipe does not say to remove them, but that is the point of tying them.
- Blanching the potatoesHere it means a brief boil in water, drained off, to rinse away surface starch. Two or three minutes is enough; they finish cooking in the stock.
- The French rollA small crusty white roll, crust discarded, the soft interior used as thickener. About 1 to 1½ cups of torn crumb from a modern bread roll or half a baguette. Waxy potatoes plus bread give body without pastiness; floury potatoes need less bread.
- Stock quantityThe original leaves it open. Reckon on about 2 quarts total for ten large potatoes — enough to cover them while stewing, then more to thin the purée to a pourable consistency before the dairy goes in.
- Do not boil after the creamBring the thinned purée to the boil first, then take it off the heat and stir in the pint of milk, the cream and the butter. Boiling afterwards risks scorching the milk solids at the bottom of the pot and dulling the flavour.
- SeasoningNo salt is mentioned; seasoning was generally left to the cook, and a made stock may already carry some. Taste and correct at the end; potato absorbs a surprising amount. The pinch of sugar and grate of nutmeg are in the original and worth keeping.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of toast, served alongside or floated on top. Fried in butter rather than toasted dry is equally period and better eating.
- YieldTen large potatoes plus 1½ pints of dairy makes a great deal of soup — comfortably 10 to 12 servings. Halving the whole recipe works without adjustment.
Anything on a French menu called Parmentier contains potato, and the name commemorates Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737–1813), the army pharmacist and agronomist who spent decades persuading the French that potatoes were fit for people rather than only for livestock. He had eaten them as a prisoner of war in Prussia, and campaigned for them through publicity as much as agronomy — the stories of guarded potato fields and potato flowers worn at court are traditional and often repeated, though the documented core of his work is the famine-relief writing and the official trials he ran outside Paris. By the time Cassell's was compiled in late Victorian England, the label had settled into kitchen French as simple shorthand: hachis Parmentier for the mince under a potato crust, potage Parmentier for this purée of potato and leek. The bread crumb as thickener marks it as an older recipe than the one most cooks now know; twentieth-century versions lean on the potato starch alone.