Cream
There are so many things called cream that it is difficult to know what we are talking about when the name is mentioned. Almost anything with the consistence, even without the colour, of cream, is called by its name; and nobody seems to remember the rightful name of cullis. Putting genuine cream, however, out of account, the chief thing known in the French kitchen by that name is what in England is known as a custard. The most common name in France for a custard is English cream ; and it was so called almost universally until Carême put a stop to it. He was indignant that England should get the credit of the custard ; and now it is known by his followers simply as Crème au bain-marie. Carême, however, who refused petulantly to give the name of Crème Anglaise to the custard, put a little bit of isinglass into it and then insisted that it should be called Crème Française! A bit of stiffening makes all the difference between French and English. There are dozens of these creams all with a separate name according to the flavour-vanilla, coffee, orange, maraschino, apricot; and if whipt cream should be added, that makes another long series, each with a separate name. The receipt for Custards will be found in alphabetical order.
CRÉCY-is the name which the French have given to their best carrot soup, because the most famous of their Cress carrots are grown there; and the English accept the name because they like to remember the great battle of the 26th August, 1346, when they watered the carrots of Crécy with the best French blood. The French were to the English in the battle as five to one; and it was on this occasion that the Black Prince, a boy of sixteen, won his spurs. To commemorate the event he took the crest of the slain Bohemian king-three ostrich feathers with the motto of Ich Dien-which has ever since been the crest and the motto of the Princes of Wales. It follows that on the 26th of August the Prince of Wales and all his friends invariably eat two platefuls of Crécy.
Take a plentiful Mirepoix, and after it has passed, put a quantity of carrots cut slanting on the top of it. Moisten it with broth, and keep it moist and simmering till the carrots are done. The length of time will depend on the size to which the carrots have been cut. Then take all, pound it in a mortar, and pass it through a tammy or fine sieve. It ought to be at this stage a thick purée. Thin it down with broth; sugar it-the proportion is generally a tablespoonful of sugar to two gallons; put it on the fire to heat; finish it with some fresh butter; and in serving it add either crusts or rice.
CRÊPE. The French for pancake, at root the same as crape and crisp. In the English of Chaucer's time a pancake was called a crisp or a cresp.
CRÊPINETTE.--A flat sausage enveloped in pig's caul. Buy it ready made at Dumas', 55, Prince's Street, Leicester Square.
The entry rambles through creams, pancakes and sausages, but buried in the middle is a complete working recipe for potage Crécy, the French carrot purée soup. These notes address that soup.
- Mirepoix, and "after it has passed"A mirepoix is the aromatic base of diced root vegetables with a little fatty bacon or ham, cooked in fat; nineteenth-century versions were often richer than the modern one. "Passed" here most likely means cooked down in the fat until soft rather than strained, since the straining comes later through the tammy.
- Carrots cut slantingCutting on the bias exposes more surface and speeds the cooking. For a soup that will be puréed anyway, uniform 1/2-inch pieces are what matters; expect 20 to 30 minutes of simmering.
- A tammy or fine sieveA tammy was a worsted cloth through which purée was wrung by two people twisting opposite ends. A blender followed by a fine chinois gives a smoother result in a fraction of the time.
- The sugar proportionOne tablespoon to two gallons is a restaurant-scale measure — roughly a third of a teaspoon per quart. It is there to lift the carrot, not to sweeten. Scale it down accordingly and taste before adding more.
- BrothHere this means household stock, which would generally have been unsalted or only lightly salted. Commercial stock is already salted, so hold back on seasoning until the soup is finished and reduced.
- Finishing with butterBest added after the soup is hot, off the heat rather than at a boil, which can break the emulsion and dull the gloss. A generous 1 to 2 oz per quart suits the richness intended, though the recipe gives no quantity.
- Crusts or rice"Crusts" here means bread crusts served with or in the soup, commonly fried or toasted; or plain boiled rice added at the last moment. Rice cooked in the soup will keep thickening it as it stands.
- ScaleThe two-gallon figure in the sugar proportion suggests a large professional batch. Scaled down, about 2 lb of carrots, a small mirepoix and 2 quarts of broth should give six to eight servings.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), written anonymously by the journalist E. S. Dallas for the Soho restaurateur Auguste Kettner, is a dictionary rather than a cookbook, which is why a note on creams, a soup recipe, an etymology of crêpe and a shop address for sausages all sit in one column. Which Crécy gave its name to the carrot is disputed — the soup is often traced to Crécy-la-Chapelle (Crécy-en-Brie) in Seine-et-Marne rather than the Crécy-en-Ponthieu of the battle — and potage Crécy is the standard French name for carrot purée soup; the book's cheerful linking of it to the battle of 26 August 1346, and to the Prince of Wales's ostrich feathers, is a Victorian conceit rather than any documented culinary connection. The digression on Carême — that he objected to crème anglaise as a name for custard, and that a little isinglass was enough to make a French dish of an English one — rests essentially on this book's own telling, though it makes a fair jab at the culinary nationalism of the period."Cullis" in the opening line is the anglicised coulis, then meaning a rich strained meat essence rather than a fruit sauce.