Home › The Principles of Cookery › Spring Soup
Spring Soup
Take a mixture of any or all kinds of early vegetables, such as young turnips and carrots, spring onions, mustard and cress, cauliflowers, lettuce, green peas, asparagus-tops, etc. A very small bunch of parsley and a little chervil, and three or four leaves of sorrel finely-shredded may be added if liked. Half a pound of mixed vegetables will be sufficient for a quart of stock. With small vegetable-scoops cut the vegetables into fancy shapes of about the same size, or into thin shreds about an inch long. Throw these into boiling water, and let them remain for a minute or two. Drain them, and put them into another saucepan with as much boiling clear stock (see CLEAR SOUP) as is required. Let the soup boil gently till the vegetables are done enough. Taste in order to ascertain whether further seasoning is required, and serve very hot. In boiling the vegetables, it should be remembered that some will need to boil longer than others, and therefore they must not all be put in together. Time, altogether, about an hour and a half. Sufficient, a quart of soup for five or six persons.
A clear consommé with a spring vegetable garnish, and the whole thing lives or dies on the stock. The method is sound; only the timings need reading with care.
- The hinge: cook the vegetables in stagesThe instruction buried at the end is the important one. Carrot and turnip need eight to twelve minutes, cauliflower florets four to five, peas and asparagus tips two to three, and shredded lettuce, cress and sorrel only long enough to wilt in the hot soup. Adding them together gives you grey vegetables in a cloudy broth.
- "Time, altogether, about an hour and a half"Ninety minutes is far longer than vegetables cut this small need in the pot, so the figure most likely covers preparation -- cutting several vegetables into matched shapes by hand -- as well as the simmer. Judge doneness by the vegetables rather than the clock.
- QuantitiesA quart here is the imperial quart, 40 fl oz or about 1.15 litres; a US quart of 32 fl oz works with proportionally less vegetable. Half a pound is 225 g of prepared vegetables, which is generous garnish for that volume.
- Vegetable-scoopsThese are parisienne cutters — the small end of a melon baller, 10 to 15 mm. Uniform size matters more than the shape, since it is what makes staged cooking predictable. A fine julienne an inch long is the easier alternative the recipe already offers.
- Mustard and cressPunnet-grown seedlings of white mustard and garden cress, sold in Britain as a salad crop and now most easily replaced by any peppery microgreen. They are a finishing garnish, not a boiling vegetable.
- SorrelThree or four leaves is deliberate restraint. Sorrel is sharply acidic and will turn khaki within seconds of hitting hot liquid, so shred it fine and add it at the last moment for flavour rather than looks.
- The blanching stepThe minute or two in boiling water before the stock goes in sets colour and draws off the raw earthiness that would otherwise muddy a clear soup. Refresh in cold water if you are not proceeding straight away.
- StockThe cross-reference is to a clear, clarified stock; clear soups of this period were generally clarified with egg white and lean minced beef, though the referenced page is not reproduced here. A good unclouded homemade chicken or veal stock, well skimmed and strained through muslin, gets you most of the way; a stock cube will not, since there is nothing here to hide behind.
- ServingA quart for five or six means cups of roughly 190 to 225 ml, served as an opening course. As a main-course bowl it feeds two or three.
This is the English rendering of potage printanier, the spring member of a family of clear French soups distinguished by their garnish -- julienne for matchsticks, brunoise for dice, printanier for young spring vegetables, often scooped into little balls and pearls. The recipe teaches two things at once: how a clear stock is used, and how vegetables of different densities must be timed against each other. It also marks a moment in the calendar that mattered far more before refrigeration and air freight. Young turnips, spring onions, the first peas and asparagus tips arrived together after a winter of roots and dried pulses, and a soup that showed them off whole and bright in a clear broth was a way of announcing the season at table.