Palestine Soup
The name given to soup made from the Girasole, ignorantly called the Jerusalem artichoke. PANADA-for forcemeat. Soak in warm water the crumb of fine bread. When it is quite moist and soft put it in a cloth and wring out the water. Then put it into a saucepan with a lump of butter and a little salt, and beat it smooth and dry over a very slow fire, taking care that it browns in no way. Put it aside to cool. Instead of butter, milk may be used, or a little white broth.
The headword here is only a definition, but the entry that follows it — panada for forcemeat — is a working recipe: the bread paste used to bind quenelles, stuffings and fish forcemeats. A few of its terms need translating.
- "Crumb of fine bread"This means the soft interior of a good white loaf with the crust cut away, torn into pieces — not dried breadcrumbs from a packet, which will turn to paste and grit. A close-textured white sandwich loaf or brioche-style bread works; open, holey sourdough absorbs unevenly.
- No quantities givenKettner leaves you to scale the panada to the forcemeat. If you want a starting point, try roughly equal weights of bread crumb and the liquid it is finished with, and butter at about a fifth of the bread's weight; adjust by feel. Proportions of panada to forcemeat in older French practice vary a good deal, so treat any fixed fraction as a modern rule of thumb rather than a rule.
- The hinge: dry it, don't colour it"Beat it smooth and dry over a very slow fire, taking care that it browns in no way" is the whole technique. The point is to drive off water so the paste pulls away from the pan in one mass, like choux. Any browning puts specks and a toasted flavour into a forcemeat meant to be pale.
- "A very slow fire"Lowest heat on the smallest burner, and keep the spoon moving. A heavy pan helps; a thin one will scorch the bottom before the middle dries.
- Wringing out the waterWring hard in a clean cloth or a doubled square of muslin. Left too wet, the panada will not dry down in the pan and the forcemeat slackens; squeezed bone dry, it goes lumpy. It should feel like well-wrung laundry.
- Milk or white broth instead of butterMilk gives a softer, sweeter panada suited to chicken and fish quenelles; "white broth" is an unbrowned veal or poultry stock. Butter gives the richest result and the firmest set once chilled.
- Cool it before use"Put it aside to cool" matters: warm panada beaten into raw pounded meat or fish will start to loosen the mixture. Spread it on a plate, cover, and chill until you need it.
- Palestine soup itselfNo method is given, so nothing to make from that line. It is a purée of Jerusalem artichokes, usually with stock and cream; look under a modern recipe for proportions.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877, ghost-written for the London restaurateur Auguste Kettner and generally credited to E. S. Dallas) is as much a dictionary of opinion as a cookbook, and this entry shows the house style: a swipe at the English name of a vegetable, then straight into a technique. Palestine soup is a pun — has nothing to do with Jerusalem, and the tuber's Italian name girasole, sunflower, is the usual explanation for how "Jerusalem" got attached to it in English. The panada that follows is older and more fundamental: from Latin panis, bread, it is the bread-and-liquid paste that classical French kitchens used to bind and lighten forcemeats, and it is the direct ancestor of the panade still called for in quenelles, terrines and meatballs.