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POTAGE (a la Crecy)
A superlative carrot soup. Slice off the red part of a dozen large carrots, and put them into a stewpan, with two ounces of butter, a large lump of sugar, three good-sized onions, two turnips, a dozen peppercorns, a quarter of a pound of uncooked lean ham, the outer sticks of two heads of celery, and four leeks. Cover, then sweat the vegetables over a gentle fire for ten minutes. Shake the saucepan to keep the contents from burning. Pour over them a quart of cold stock or water, and let them simmer gently for two hours, or until the vegetables are quite tender. Strain off the soup, and with a wooden spoon press the vegetables through a sieve. Mix the pulp again with the stock, season with pepper and salt, put it back into the stewpan, and let it boil. Draw it to the side of the fire for a few minutes, and skim off the fat as it rises to the surface. Add pepper and salt, and serve. Send toasted sippets to table in a separate dish. If there is no stock at hand, and water has to be used for the soup, a table-spoonful of Bovril should be added to it. Time, three hours and a half. Probable cost, 8d. per pint. Sufficient for six persons.
A classic French purée soup made before blenders existed, which is why the method reads as fussy. Everything hinges on the first ten minutes: the vegetables must sweat in butter without colouring, since any browning turns the finished soup muddy in both flavour and colour.
- "The red part" of the carrotsVictorian cookery books commonly directed that only the outer orange flesh be used, the paler, woodier core being cut away. Modern carrots have a far less distinct core, so use them whole, trimmed of the tough stem end.
- StewpanA heavy lidded saucepan or Dutch oven, not a baking dish. You want a wide base so a dozen sliced carrots plus turnips, leeks and celery can sweat rather than steam in a heap.
- LiquidA quart of stock (an imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.1 litres) over that quantity of vegetables gives a very thick puree. Hold back some stock, or keep extra hot stock aside to thin the soup after sieving, until it coats a spoon without being stiff.
- The lump of sugarLoaf-sugar lumps varied in size; a modern sugar cube, about a teaspoon, is a fair stand-in for the "large lump" called for. It is there to lift the carrots, not to sweeten; with today's sweeter carrots you can leave it out and judge at the end.
- Lean uncooked hamFour ounces of raw gammon or a piece of unsmoked ham hock. It is a seasoning, discarded with the rest of the solids. Salt only at the end, since the ham gives up a good deal.
- SievingThe wooden spoon and sieve are what gave this soup its texture. A blender is faster, but pass the purée through a fine sieve afterwards anyway to catch celery and leek fibre, which does not break down.
- BovrilStill sold, and still a reasonable stand-in when using water; a tablespoon of any concentrated beef bouillon or a teaspoon of yeast extract does the same job. Reduce added salt accordingly.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of toast, served separately so they stay crisp. Fried croutons are the same idea.
- Time and yieldThe stated three and a half hours covers the ten-minute sweat, the two-hour simmer and the slow business of hand-sieving; a blender saves only the sieving time, not the simmer. Sufficient for six.
Cr"y in cookery is a name attached to dishes built on carrots. It is most often linked to Cr"cy-la-Chapelle in Brie, though Cr"cy-en-Ponthieu in Picardy is also claimed, and by the nineteenth century \ la Cr"cy was kitchen shorthand for a carrot pur"e, a garnish of glazed carrots, or this soup. The link to the battle of Cr"cy in 1346 is often repeated but is decorative rather than documented. The recipe follows the standard pattern of the classical pur"e soup: sweat mixed vegetables in butter with a scrap of raw ham for depth, moisten, simmer, sieve, correct, skim. The note on Bovril, and the price given in pence per pint, mark it as a late-Victorian household book rather than a chef's manual.