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Queen's Soup, or Potage a La Reine
Skin and clean two fine fowls or three young chickens, carefully removing the dark spongy substance which is inside. Put them into a saucepan, with a bunch of parsley, and pour over them as much good white stock, nicely flavoured, as will cover them. Let them simmer gently for an hour. Take them up, and pick off all the white flesh from the birds. Blanch and pound a dozen sweet almonds and two bitter ones. Beat them to a paste in a mortar, with a little water to keep them from oiling. Soak the crumb of a penny roll in the broth, and when it is quite moist, wring it in a cloth, to squeeze the moisture from it. Chop the flesh of the chickens, and pound it to a paste, with the soaked roll, the hard-boiled yolks of two eggs, and the pounded almonds. Stir this mixture into the soup, and press the whole through a sieve. Heat it in a clean saucepan, and mix with it a pint and a half of thick cream which has been boiled separately. Stir it over the fire till it boils, and if not sufficiently thick, add a little arrowroot. Many cooks omit the yolks of eggs altogether, and use arrowroot instead. If no white stock is at hand, it may be made by putting into a saucepan three or four pounds of the knuckle of veal which has been soaked and broken up, with four ounces of uncooked lean ham, three onions, a carrot, a turnip, four or five outer sticks of celery, two sprigs of lemon thyme, a bunch of parsley, a large blade of mace, half a tea-spoonful of peppercorns, and three quarts of cold water. Bring the liquor to the boil, skim carefully till no more scum rises, then draw the saucepan to the side, and let it simmer gently and without ceasing until it is reduced to rather less than two quarts. Pour it out, and when it is stiff, clear the fat from the top, lift it out free from sediment, and it is ready for use. Time to boil the chickens, one hour. Probable cost, varying with the price of the chickens.
The problem is a single line in the middle: two bitter almonds, pounded raw into a soup that is only briefly heated. That ingredient is why this page is here to read rather than to cook.
- Bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding them damp in a mortar does. They are not a stronger version of the sweet almond; they are a different thing, and their sale for eating is restricted or prohibited in the United States and much of Europe.
- The quantity is not self-evidently harmlessTwo bitter almonds spread through a large quantity of soup is a small dose, and bitter almonds appear regularly in Victorian recipes for flavour. But the amygdalin content of individual kernels varies widely, the soup is brought to the boil only briefly at the end, and there is no way to measure what is actually in the pot. A recipe that relies on the dose being small enough is not a recipe to follow.
- Almond extract is not a substitute hereModern almond extract carries the benzaldehyde note that the bitter almonds were there to provide, but swapping it in does not rescue the rest of the method. If you want this soup, work from a current recipe for potage à la reine rather than patching this one.
- What the archaic wording meansThe "dark spongy substance" inside the birds is the lungs and kidney tissue clinging to the ribs, discarded because it clouds and sours a white stock. A "penny roll" is a small plain white bread roll, of which only the crumb is used. "White stock" is veal-and-ham stock kept pale by never letting it boil hard, which is why the fallback recipe insists on skimming and a bare simmer.
- The rest of the technique is sound, and datedPounding cooked breast meat with bread and egg yolk to body a soup is the classic pre-blender purée, and the "many cooks" who use arrowroot instead of yolks reflect a wider move towards starch thickening. Boiling the cream separately before adding it at the end would let the finished soup be brought back to a boil with less risk of splitting.
- ScaleTwo fowls, three quarts of stock reduced to two, and a pint and a half of cream make a very large quantity by present standards — a formal dinner course for a dozen or more, not a family supper.
Potage à la reine belongs to a long line of pale, almond-and-poultry soups that run back through medieval European cookery, where pounded almonds did the work later given to cream and starch. The name is traditionally attached to a French queen — Marguerite de Valois is the one most often named, though the connection is repeated far more often than it is documented — and by the eighteenth century "queen's soup" simply meant a white purée of chicken, thickened and enriched, served at the head of a formal dinner. The recipe demonstrates two skills at once: drawing a clear white veal stock, and building a smooth liaison by mortar and sieve. The two bitter almonds are the period's signature touch, a trace of marzipan bitterness that Victorian cooks added to blancmanges, custards and white soups alike, and the ingredient that has since taken this recipe out of use.