Dave Kirkland
SORREL SOUP
Stew four ounces of leek in two ounces of butter, add twelve ounces of potato, a faggot of aromatic herbs and a handful of sorrel. Cook fast until the potatoes are well broken up. Pass through a sieve.
Shred sufficient sorrel into Julienne to fill two tablespoons and sauté this in a little butter, then add to the soup and season. Take two yolks of eggs, one ounce of butter and half a pint of boiling milk, or use half cream and half milk and omit the butter. Place this in a soup tureen and pour the soup over it, stirring all the time of pouring. Add a little chopped chervil or parsley and some shredded and toasted bread at the same time. 162 Yours truly,
A classic French potato-and-sorrel purée finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The heading promises bacon that never appears in the method — either a printer's error or a note that the soup was served alongside broiled bacon, which is how many of these actor-contributed pages were set.
- Weights and yieldFour ounces of leek is roughly one large trimmed leek; twelve ounces of potato is about two medium potatoes. The recipe gives no yield; on these quantities it would probably stretch to three or four small servings.
- A faggot of herbsA bundle of aromatic herbs tied with string — what a modern recipe calls a bouquet garni. Parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf are the standard trio. The recipe does not say so, but such a bundle would normally be lifted out before the soup is sieved.
- Half a pintAn Imperial half-pint is ten fluid ounces, about 1¼ US cups. The recipe says boiling milk; scalded rather than at a rolling boil is the safer reading, as very hot milk can curdle the yolks.
- The liaison is the hingeYolks, butter and hot milk go into the cold tureen and the hot soup is poured over them while stirring. That pouring is the cooking — do not return the finished soup to the heat or the yolks will scramble and the texture is lost.
- Cook fast, then sieve"Cook fast until the potatoes are well broken up" means a hard simmer, twenty minutes or so. A food mill gives the intended texture; a blender will make potato gluey, so pulse briefly or push it through a sieve as directed.
- Sorrel discoloursSorrel goes olive-drab the moment it hits heat, and worse in aluminium or unlined iron, which the acid also attacks. Use stainless or enamelled pans, and sauté the Julienne shreds only until they collapse — under a minute.
- Finding sorrelGarden or French sorrel turns up at farmers' markets in spring and early summer. Spinach with a squeeze of lemon is the usual substitute, though it lacks the sharpness the soup is built around.
- ServingThe toasted shredded bread goes into the tureen with the herbs, not on top as croutons — it softens into the soup. Serve at once; the liaison will not hold or reheat.
Sorrel soup is one of the oldest surviving uses of a plant grown in European kitchen gardens long before spinach was common, valued for the oxalic tang behind country names such as "sour dock" or "sourgrass". The potato-thickened, sieved version here is straight out of the French professional repertoire — close kin to the potage santé and soupe à l'oseille of the classical kitchen — and the finish with egg yolks and cream stirred into the tureen rather than the pot is a standard nineteenth-century liaison. The page is signed by its contributor, in the manner of celebrity-contributed collections of the period, which traded on the names at the top of the page rather than on originality in the cooking.