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RABBIT SOUP (M. Ude's recipe)
Take the fillets of four rabbits to make an entree, and with the legs and shoulders make the soup as follows. Put them into warm water to take out the blood; when quite clean put them into a stewpan with a bundle of parsley and a ladleful of good broth; put all this to simmer over a slow fire; when done through, moisten with some good broth. Season to taste, and let it boil for an hour only: if you let it boil too long the soup will be brown. Next take the meat out of the broth, drain it, and let it cool, then pick all the meat from the bones, and put it into the mortar, with four yolks of eggs boiled hard, and the crumb of a roll soaked in a little broth; pound all this very fine; rub it through a tamis, moisten with the broth, and when done add a pint of double cream that has boiled; mix all together, and serve. Take particular notice that this soup must be very white; sometimes you give it with vermicelli, sometimes with pearl barley, sometimes with rice; on all occasions, each of these articles must be done separately in broth, and put into the soup afterwards. If you have abundance of rabbits, you may also use the fillets, as the soup will then be whiter and better.
A white purée soup in the early nineteenth-century French manner, built on rabbit meat pounded with hard yolks and bread rather than thickened with roux. Everything in the method serves one aim: keeping it pale.
- The hinge: never let it colourThe meat is sweated in broth, not browned, and the first stage is held over a slow fire; Ude allows an hour's boil at the broth stage but warns that boiling too long turns the soup brown. Any catch on the bottom of the pan will do the same. Once the cream is in, keep it below a simmer.
- QuantitiesThe legs and shoulders of four rabbits is roughly 4 lb of bone-in meat, yielding perhaps 1.5 lb picked. Farmed rabbit at 2.5-3 lb dressed is the closest modern equivalent; wild rabbit is leaner, darker and will not give the same whiteness.
- A ladleful of brothAbout a cup, enough to keep the meat from sticking while it steams through. The second moistening should just cover.
- Tamis and mortarA tamis is a drum sieve of stretched cloth or fine mesh. A food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still pass the purée through a fine chinois or sieve afterwards, since sinew and stray bone slivers will not break down.
- Double creamBritish double cream is about 48 percent butterfat; US heavy cream at 36 percent works, though the soup will be marginally thinner. Scald it separately before adding, as directed, so it does not shock the purée.
- Hard yolks and the panadeFour hard-cooked yolks and a bread crumb soaked in broth are the thickeners here, standing in for flour. Use a plain white roll with the crust removed; enriched or sourdough bread will throw off both colour and flavour.
- Garnishes cooked apartVermicelli, pearl barley and rice are simmered separately in broth for good reason: their starch would cloud the soup. Barley needs 40 minutes, rice about 15, vermicelli 3 or 4.
- Slow fireLowest burner setting, or a heat diffuser. The hour of boiling Ude allows is for the broth stage only, before the meat comes out.
- YieldThe recipe fixes no quantity of broth, so the yield is guesswork; the pint of cream suggests something on the order of a few quarts, enough for a first course for a table. The saved fillets are meant to become a separate entree.
Louis Eustache Ude was among the most celebrated French chefs working in England in the early nineteenth century, said by his own account to have cooked for Louis XVI's household before the Revolution, and later chef to the Earl of Sefton and to the gaming club Crockford's; his The French Cook, first published in 1813, ran through many editions and was still being quarried by compilers when Cassell's dictionary appeared decades later. The soup belongs to the family of white puree soups potages that a French-trained kitchen produced as a matter of course, thickened with pounded meat, hard yolks and a bread panade rather than flour, and prized for a pallor that signalled care and expense. Its opening line is a period detail in itself: four rabbits are broken down so the fillets can go to an entree to the soup, the logic of a large household kitchen sending several dishes to one table, where nothing is wasted but nothing is stretched either.