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Cream of Crecy Soup
3 medium-sized carrots, 1 1/3 cups sliced 1 cup water 2 cups milk 1 tablespoon flour 1/2 cup cream 1 slice onion--1/8-inch thick 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon salt Cook carrots in water. Steep bay leaf and onion in the milk and cream in double boiler. Remove onion and bay leaf, and thicken with flour. Put carrots through colander, and add to the thickened milk and cream. One potato with it relieves the strong taste. Parsley may be added.
A light, old-fashioned purée soup that depends almost entirely on the carrots — the flour is there for body, not thickness. The hinge is the flour: added dry to hot milk it will lump, so slake it first.
- Thickening without lumpsWhisk the tablespoon of flour to a smooth paste with a little of the cold milk or cream before it goes into the hot liquid, or cook it briefly with an equal weight of butter as a roux and whisk the hot milk in. One tablespoon to the 2 1/2 cups of milk and cream gives a barely-napping consistency rather than a thick soup.
- "Put carrots through a colander"This means forcing the cooked carrots through the perforations with a spoon or pestle — a purée, not a drain. A food mill, sieve or blender does the same job faster and smoother. The cup of cooking water can be kept and added with the purée rather than poured away.
- Cooking the carrotsSliced carrots in one cup of water, covered, need about 15 minutes at a simmer until they collapse under a fork. If the water boils away before they are soft, add a splash rather than letting them scorch.
- The onion sliceAn eighth-inch slice off a medium onion is roughly a tablespoon. Steeping it with the bay leaf in the milk and cream over the double boiler wants 10 to 15 minutes below a simmer — long enough to perfume the dairy, short enough that it does not turn cabbagey.
- Double boilerUsed here because milk and cream scorch and skin over direct heat. A heavy saucepan on low with attention works, but the water bath is genuinely the safer vessel for a dairy base with no starch in it yet.
- The potatoThe note about one potato relieving the strong taste is worth taking. A small peeled potato cooked with the carrots and puréed with them mutes the carrot and adds body, letting you use less flour.
- Yield and finishAbout 3 1/2 cups if the carrot water is left out, nearer 4 1/2 if it is added back with the purée — two to three servings. Season at the end, since the cream and the carrot water shift the salt balance; chopped parsley goes in off the heat so it stays green.
Crécy is French kitchen shorthand for carrots: any soup, garnish or purée labelled à la Crécy is built on them, and the name is generally traced to Crécy-en-Ponthieu or Crécy-la-Chapelle, both towns whose surrounding market gardens were known for the root. By the late nineteenth century the term had been absorbed wholesale into English and American cookbooks, where it lent a plain carrot soup an air of the classical repertoire.