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SPRING SOUP (M. Ude's recipe)
Take carrots, turnips, heads of celery, and small onions cut into the shape of olives; blanch them in winter, but in summer fry them with a little butter, and put them to boil in clear broth with a little sugar. Put the soup in the corner of the stove to skim away all the butter. Have ready the green tops of asparagus, and French beans cut into lozenges which have been boiled separately in water very green; put them into the soup when you send it up, with slices of crust of bread cut the size of a penny and soaked separately in a little broth; if you have any peas, you may put in some likewise to boil with the soup.
Ude gives a method rather than a formula, with no quantities and no times, which is normal for a chef writing for other professionals. The hinge is that the green vegetables are cooked apart and added at the last moment; stirred into the pot early they turn olive-drab and the whole point of a spring soup is lost.
- ProportionsNone are given. For about 2 quarts of good clear broth, allow roughly 3 cups total of the turned root vegetables and onions, plus a cup or so of asparagus tips, beans and peas added at the end. Serves six as a first course.
- "Cut into the shape of olives"Small barrel or olive shapes pared with a small knife, what a modern kitchen would call a tourne (usually given seven faces, though Ude specifies nothing beyond the olive shape). Cut them to a uniform size, roughly an inch, so everything cooks at the same rate. Uniform size matters more than elegance.
- Blanch or fryWinter roots are tough and strong, so they are blanched in water first; summer vegetables are young and sweet enough to be sweated in butter, which builds flavour. Do one or the other, not both.
- "A little sugar"A pinch, perhaps a teaspoon for 2 quarts. It is there to round out winter carrots and turnips, not to sweeten the soup.
- "The corner of the stove"On a coal range the corner was the coolest spot, where a pot could sit at a bare tremble so the fat rose in a still film and could be lifted off. On a gas or induction hob, use the lowest setting or move the pan half off the burner; a rolling boil will emulsify the butter back in.
- The green vegetables"Boiled separately in water very green" means cooked briefly in plenty of boiling water so they keep their colour, then drained; salting the water and refreshing in cold water if they are not going straight into the soup are modern habits that serve the same end. Reheat them in the broth only for a moment as it goes to the table.
- French beans in lozengesDiamond shapes cut on a slant, about half an inch across. Modern green beans do the same job; string them if they need it.
- The breadRounds of crust roughly the size of a penny of the period, a little over an inch across, soaked in broth in a separate dish so they do not cloud the soup. Serve them floating on top or handed round beside it.
Louis Eustache Ude was among the most celebrated of the French chefs working in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, cook to the Earl of Sefton and later to Crockford's gaming club in St James's, and author of The French Cook (1813), the kind of source from which recipes like this may well have circulated into later English compilations such as Cassell's. The dish belongs to the family the French call potage printanier — unthickened clear broth garnished with the first vegetables of the year, and its whole character depends on the garnish rather than on any thickening. The instruction to blanch in winter but fry in summer is a reminder that the seasons still dictated technique: root vegetables held in a cellar until spring were bitter and fibrous, while the same vegetables lifted young needed nothing but butter. The careful geometry — olive shapes, lozenges, penny-sized rounds — is the signature of a professional kitchen with staff to do the paring, and it is why a soup of this kind reads as grand despite being made of carrots, turnips and beans.