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One Cabbage Lettuce
A little Tarragon and Chervil.
Shred the vegetables all of the same length and size.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, and fry all the vegetables (except the lettuce, tarragon, and chervil) a light brown; add three pints of boiling consommé, the sugar and salt. Skim well until all grease is removed; then add lettuce, tarragon, and chervil, let it boil a few minutes, and serve.
Ordinary clear consommé is required for this soup.
This is the working half of a julienne-style clear soup: the page opens mid-ingredient-list, so the vegetables and their quantities have to be inferred from the method. Everything here depends on the consommé staying clear.
- The missing ingredient listThe title line and the first sentence are the tail end of a list that has been cut off — one cabbage lettuce, a little tarragon and chervil, plus unnamed vegetables, with butter, sugar and salt appearing only in the method. The vegetables themselves are not identified on this page; a shredded clear soup of this period would typically use roots such as carrot, turnip, onion, leek and celery, but neither their quantities nor the amount of butter can be recovered from what survives.
- Three pintsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so three pints is 60 fl oz — about 7 cups or 1.7 litres. Enough for perhaps six first-course servings.
- Cabbage lettuceNot cabbage. A cabbage lettuce is a heading, soft-leaved type — what is now sold as butterhead or Boston lettuce. Romaine will do but is coarser; shred it finely and expect a firmer bite.
- Shred all of the same length and sizeThis is the hinge of the dish. The vegetables are cut into matchsticks of identical length so they cook evenly and look deliberate in a clear broth; the recipe gives no measurement, though shreds of an inch or two are usual for this cut. Uneven cuts simply cook unevenly.
- Fry a light brownThe browning is for colour and sweetness, not for softening, and it is the step most likely to ruin the soup. Take the vegetables just to pale gold over moderate heat; any scorched fragments will darken and muddy the consommé.
- Skim wellButter fat rises to the surface and can be lifted off. A ladle held flat at the surface, or a sheet of paper towel drawn across it, does the same job. Keep the pot at a bare simmer while skimming; a rolling boil disperses the fat and makes it harder to remove, and the clarity is lost.
- The lettuce and herbs go in last"A few minutes" probably means two or three. Shredded butterhead collapses almost immediately, and chervil in particular loses its faint anise scent quickly in hot liquid. Tarragon is stronger, so use it sparingly.
- The consomméThe recipe assumes a properly clarified consommé made in the same kitchen — it does not say from what meat. A good commercial beef or veal stock, degreased and strained through a cloth, is the practical substitute; season it before adding the vegetables, since the finished soup is only briefly on the heat.
This is a shredded-vegetable clear soup with a lettuce finish, of the kind British professional cookery took wholesale from the French repertoire in the nineteenth century. Julienne describes vegetables cut into uniform threads, though the origin of the word itself is not settled; cookery writers of the period were emphatic that the beauty of a clear soup lay in the exactness of the knife work. Chervil and tarragon are among the fines herbes associated with delicate spring soups; both fade fast in cooking, which is precisely why they and the lettuce are held back until the last minute. The instruction that "ordinary clear consommé is required" suggests that more than one grade of consommé might be to hand.