Bonne Femme Soup
Shred fine a cucumber (already soaked) and four lettuce, one onion and a handful of chervil. Put these into a soup pot, with two pats of butter, a little nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Simmer over a slow fire about ten minutes, then add a good spoonful of flour, and three pints of veal broth. Boil for a quarter of an hour. Stir into it a seasoning of six yolks of eggs, half a pint of cream and a dessert-spoonful of sugar. Do not let it boil after the egg and cream are added.
A gentle “good-wife’s” soup of cucumber and lettuce, softened in butter and finished with a rich egg-cream-and-sugar liaison.
- What “bonne femme” meansÀ la bonne femme is a French term for plain, homey cooking — “good-wife style.” It signals simple, comforting, unfussy food.
- Chervil — and a substituteChervil is a delicate herb with a faint anise note. If you can’t find it, use a mix of parsley with a little tarragon.
- The liaisonSix yolks, cream, and a spoon of sugar stirred in at the end make it silky and slightly sweet. Add off the heat and don’t boil, or the yolks scramble.
- Cook the greens gentlyTen minutes of slow simmering keeps the cucumber and lettuce fresh-tasting; this is a soft, pale soup, not a browned one.
“À la bonne femme” — in the manner of the good housewife — is one of those French kitchen phrases that quietly honors home cooking over restaurant show. It promises the plain and nourishing: a soup made of what’s in the garden, thickened with an egg from the yard. That such humble food carried a proper French name, and a place in a fine cookbook, is very much the Créole spirit, where the everyday and the elegant were never far apart.
From page 8 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
