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Soups or Potages: Jerusalem
Consommé à la Colbert has a garnish of lettuce, celery, Jerusalem artichokes and button onions. à la Jerusalem, or à la Palestine, has Jerusalem artichokes cut into very small balls. à la macédoine is garnished with several kinds of vegetables. à la Nivernaise has vegetables cut in thin small shapes, Italian paste, and quenelles cut in slices. Another soup which bears the same name is garnished with quenelles made of a purée of carrots. à la Duchesse is garnished with little balls of a light cheese paste and small shapes of vegetables. à la Napoléon has tiny rissoles in paste boiled in the consommé. à la Lélie has shreds of chicken, almonds, carrot and tarragon. à l'Innocent has shreds of chicken and almonds, with quenelles, and little shapes of custard. à la Pompadour has little shapes of vegetables and custard of several different colours. à la Bernhardt has little slices of marrow, tiny quenelles, and watercress. à la Grande Duchesse has little anchovy quenelles and cheese quenelles, and shreds of chicken and tongue. à l'Alexandra has small round slices of chicken, and cherries. à la Christina is garnished with chestnuts and cherries.
Consommé à la Valetta has slices of Tangerine oranges and shreds of the peel. à la D'Orléans has little quenelles coloured green, red and white. à la Rachel has green, red and black quenelles, made with tarragon, lokster and truffle.
Another soup of this name is garnished with little shapes of steamed white and yolk of egg, carrot, turnip and French beans. à la Rosière has little cheese quenelles and ham quenelles. à la Chasseur has little quenelles of game. A clear game soup is also called by this name. à la Duc de York is a clear game soup, garnished with quenelles of game. à la Princesse is a clear chicken soup, garnished with vegetables cut in fancy shapes. de poisson is a clear fish soup. à la Dufferin is a clear curried fish soup. It is served with rice and little round slices of fillets of soles. à l'Indienne is clear Mulligatawny soup.
Potage Baraquine is garnished with tapioca, and strips of chicken and truffles. croûtes au pot has toasted crusts. de riz au gras is Brunoise or Jardinière soup with the addition of rice.
Bouillon is gravy soup, or broth. It may be served au riz-with rice, or à la Colbert-with poached eggs.
The following soups can be either clear or thick :- Potage à la tortue. Turtle soup.
Potage à la fausse tortue. Mock turtle. aux abatis d'oie. Giblet. aux queues de bœuf. Ox-tail. Thick ox-tail soup is called queues de bœuf à l'Anglaise. tête de veau.
Calf's head. aux grouses. Grouse. aux perdreaux. Partridge. aux faisans. Pheasant. aux bécasses.
Woodcock. au lapereau. Rabbit. au lévraut or à la lièvre. Hare. à la venaison. Venison.
This is a list of garnishes. Every consommé on the page is the same clear soup, and what separates thirty named dishes from one another is only what was dropped into it.
- The soup is the workConsommé is stock clarified with egg white and lean minced meat until it runs bright, and then kept scrupulously clear. The page mentions none of that because it assumed it. A cook starting from a carton has skipped the entire dish and is left making the garnish.
- Jerusalem artichokesNeither an artichoke nor anything to do with Jerusalem: a knobbly tuber from a relative of the sunflower. The book’s own alternative name for the same soup, à la Palestine, shows the confusion had already settled into the menu language. They are also notorious for causing wind, which is worth knowing before you serve them to guests in two separate courses.
- Quenelles in the soupMost of these garnishes are tiny poached dumplings of pounded meat, fish or cheese, coloured with tarragon, lobster or truffle and cut into shapes. They are a mortar-and-knife job, and they are the reason the chapter has so many names for one liquid.
- TurtlePotage à la tortue cannot be made now: sea turtles are protected and trade in them is prohibited. Mock turtle, which the page lists immediately beside it, was the standing substitute and was built on a calf’s head — which is also the entry three lines below.
- Clear or thickThe page ends by naming the soups that could be sent up either way. A formal dinner commonly offered one of each so that a guest could choose, which is why turtle, ox-tail, giblet and hare appear in a single list with no recipe attached. The decision being recorded is a decision about the card.
- BouillonThe plainest lines are the most useful ones. Broth with rice, broth with a poached egg in it, broth with toasted crusts: the same stock without the clarifying, and nothing in the chapter is easier to put on a table.
The names are a guest list. Bernhardt, Pompadour, Alexandra, Christina, Rachel, Grande Duchesse, Duc de York, Duchesse, Princesse, Colbert, Napoléon — royalty, aristocracy, French history and the celebrated performers of the day, attached to garnishes that have nothing to do with any of them. A menu written out of this chapter dates itself more precisely than anything else on the table, because the fashionable names move on. The other thing the list records is knife work: vegetables cut into very small balls, into thin small shapes, into fancy shapes; set custard cut into little shapes; tiny rissoles boiled in the soup itself. All of it exists to be seen for a moment in a clear liquid in a shallow plate, and all of it was cut by hand.