Stock III
2½ tablespoons butter 2½ tablespoons flour Soak bread crumbs in milk, add yolks of eggs rubbed through a sieve and chicken meat also rubbed through a sieve. Add gradually milk, and chicken stock highly seasoned. Bind with butter and flour cooked together, and season with salt and pepper.
St. Germain Soup 3 cups White Stock I, II, or III 1 can Marrowfat peas 1 cup cold water 1½ onion Bit of bay leaf Sprig of parsley 1 cup milk Blade of mace 2 teaspoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt ⅛ teaspoon pepper 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons cornstarch Drain and rinse peas, reserving one-third cup; put remainder in cold water with seasonings, and simmer one-half hour; rub through sieve and add stock. Bind with butter and cornstarch cooked together; boil five minutes. Add milk and reserved peas. 4 cups White Stock III
The complete recipe here is St. Germain Soup, a puree of canned peas extended with white stock and finished with milk. It is quick, and the only real technique is the butter-and-cornstarch binding.
- Marrowfat peasThese are large, starchy mature peas, sold canned or dried in British and Indian groceries. A 15-oz can of ordinary canned peas works; frozen peas give a fresher, sweeter result but less body, so expect a thinner soup.
- White Stock IIIIn this book the white stocks are mild veal or chicken stocks, unbrowned. Use a light chicken stock with no strong herbs in it; a dark beef stock will muddy both the colour and the flavour.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, and a "blade" is one piece of it. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, or a scant grating of nutmeg, substitutes. It comes out with the bay leaf and parsley at the sieving stage.
- The pepper quantityAs printed the recipe gives 2 tablespoons butter and 1½ teaspoons pepper; that much pepper is almost certainly a misprint for a fraction. Season lightly and correct at the end.
- BindingCook the butter and cornstarch together to a smooth paste, whisk it into the hot pea puree, then boil the full five minutes. Cornstarch tastes raw and chalky if it is only brought to a simmer, and the five minutes is what sets the body.
- Milk goes in last, off the boilAdd the cup of milk and the reserved whole peas after the boiling is finished and keep the pot below a simmer. Boiled milk in an acid-free pea puree will still catch and scorch on the bottom, and the reserved peas are there for texture, not further cooking.
- SievingA food mill or a blender followed by a fine sieve does in a minute what the original expects of a spoon and a sieve. Pea skins are what you are removing, so do not skip the sieve if you want it smooth.
- YieldAbout six cups finished, serving four to six as a first course.
Potage Saint-Germain is the standard French name for green pea soup, generally traced to the market gardens around Saint-Germain-en-Laye west of Paris, which supplied the capital with early peas; by the nineteenth century the name had hardened into a menu term for any pea puree. This version shows how thoroughly the canned goods industry had reached the American kitchen: a dish that in France depended on the brief spring pea season is here built on a can, available in January, with a third of the peas held back whole so the bowl still looks like it was made from something fresh. The binding is butter and cornstarch rather than a flour roux, a sign of the newer starches at work.