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Potage a la Reine
4 cups White Stock III 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns 1 stalk celery 1 slice onion 1/2 tablespoon salt Yolks 3 "hard-boiled" eggs 1/3 cup cracker crumbs Breast meat from a boiled chicken 2 cups scalded milk 1/2 cup cold milk 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour Cook stock with seasonings twenty minutes. Rub yolks of eggs through sieve. Soak cracker crumbs in cold milk until soft; add to eggs. Chop meat and rub through sieve; add to egg and cracker mixture. Then pour milk on slowly, and add to strained stock; boil three minutes. Bind with butter and flour cooked together.
A white chicken soup thickened three ways at once — sieved egg yolk, soaked cracker crumbs and a butter-flour roux. It is a good use for the breast of a bird that has already given up its stock.
- White Stock IIIA white stock of this period is generally a pale, unbrowned stock from veal and/or fowl with mild aromatics. Four cups of a good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, since the finished soup should be ivory.
- The half tablespoon of saltThat is 1 1/2 teaspoons, presumably calibrated for an unsalted homemade stock. If your stock is commercial, add a quarter of it at the start and correct at the end.
- Sieving, then and nowRubbing yolks and chicken through a sieve was one of the standard routes to a smooth purée. A food processor or a stick blender does it faster, but push the chicken through a sieve afterward anyway if you want the texture the recipe intends.
- Cracker crumbsPlain soda crackers, common crackers or water biscuits, crushed fine — not seasoned crumbs and not breadcrumbs, which absorb differently. Let them soak in the cold milk until no dry grit remains.
- Add the milk off the boilPour the scalded milk into the egg-cracker-chicken mixture slowly and while stirring, then combine with the strained stock. Dumping it in at once curdles the yolk and leaves you with grain rather than velvet.
- Three minutes means three minutesBoiling this longer will tighten the egg protein and dull the chicken. Bring it barely to a boil, count it out, then finish.
- Binding with butter and flourEqual measures, three tablespoons each, cooked together to a blond roux — no colour. Give it a minute or two after it goes in to lose the raw flour taste.
- YieldAbout six cups, or four to six first-course servings. It thickens noticeably on standing; loosen with a little more milk when reheating, gently and without boiling.