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Puree of Carrots
3 cups sliced carrots 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1/4 teaspoon white pepper 1/2 lb. stale bread 1 qt. veal broth Cook the carrots for ten minutes; drain and cook gently again until tender, with 2 cups of water and seasonings. Add the bread, broken into bits, and the broth. Simmer for an hour; pass through a puree sieve. If too soft, allow it to cook away longer; if too dry, add a little more broth or milk. Serve with breast of lamb, chops, or veal cutlets.
This is a thick bread-bound carrot puree meant as a starch-and-vegetable side, not a soup. The half pound of stale bread is what gives it body, so the texture depends entirely on how much liquid you cook off.
- The hinge: consistencyThe recipe is written to be adjusted at the end, not measured at the start. Simmer, sieve, then judge: it should mound on a spoon. Cook down further if slack, loosen with broth or milk if stiff.
- Veal brothRarely sold now. A light unsalted chicken stock is the closest substitute; a veal demi-glace diluted to quart strength works if you have it. Avoid heavily reduced or salty commercial stock, since the recipe already carries a teaspoon of salt.
- Stale breadMeans a dry, firm white loaf several days old, not packaged sandwich bread. Half a pound is roughly 8 ounces, about 6 to 8 thick slices. Crusts included; they soften completely over an hour.
- The double cookingThe carrots are boiled ten minutes and drained before being simmered again with the seasonings. The recipe does not say why; blanching of this kind was often used with strong older winter carrots. With modern sweet carrots you may notice little difference if you go straight to the seasoned water.
- Simmer timeAn hour is more than the carrots need, but the bread wants that long to disintegrate. Keep the heat very low and stir now and then; the bread settles and scorches easily.
- Passing through a sieveA food mill or fine sieve gives the intended slightly grainy texture. A blender produces something smoother and gluier because of the bread, so pulse rather than run it.
- White pepperProbably chosen so that black flecks do not show in the pale orange puree, though the recipe does not say so. Its flavour differs from black pepper, tending earthy and musty rather than floral, and a quarter teaspoon is a modest amount for this quantity.
- YieldAbout 5 to 6 cups, enough for six as a side. It reheats well over low heat with a splash of broth.
Bread-thickened purees like this belong to an older line of cookery in which stale loaf, not butter and cream, did the work of binding a vegetable dish. French kitchen practice distinguished a puree bound with rice, potato or breadcrumb from a thin vegetable soup, and American cookbooks of the early twentieth century seem to have carried some version of that distinction forward. Gold Medal Flour's promotional cookbooks are generally traced to the Washburn Crosby Company of Minneapolis and were produced to sell flour, but their vegetable chapters follow the general run of the period's domestic-science instruction: careful seasoning, a named broth, and a suggested meat to serve it against. The pairing with breast of lamb, chops or veal cutlets is a clue to its place on the plate, standing in for potato beside a plain roasted or fried meat.