Home › Soups › Soup a La Reine
Soup a La Reine
1 Left-over Roast Chicken 2 Quarts Water 1 Teaspoon Cornstarch 3/4 Cup Boiled Rice 1/2 Cup Cream Salt and Pepper to Taste Cut all the meat from the carcass of the chicken and chop very fine. Put the bones in the water, and simmer for two hours. Remove the bones and thicken with the cornstarch made smooth with a little cold water. Add the chicken and rice, and when very soft rub through a coarse strainer. Bring to the boiling point again, add the cream, and season to taste.
A carcass soup of the thrifty sort, thickened with rice and cornstarch and finished with cream. The method is sound; only the proportions and the straining need thought.
- The hinge: strain before the creamThe chicken and rice must be worked through the sieve while the soup is still hot and before the cream goes in, or the fat and dairy will clog the mesh and the purée will break. A food mill or a short burst with an immersion blender does the same work in a fraction of the time; a blender will give a smoother, more modern texture than the original intends.
- Two quarts is generous for one carcassA single roast carcass will give thin stock at that volume. Reduce the two quarts by a third during the two-hour simmer, or add a chicken wing or two, and the finished soup will taste of something. Skim the fat that rises before thickening.
- Cornstarch quantityOne teaspoon in two quarts is barely perceptible; the real body here comes from the puréed rice. Treat the cornstarch as optional and judge the thickness after the sieving. If you do use it, slake it in cold water as directed and boil it for a full minute or it will taste raw.
- Boiled riceThree-quarters of a cup means cooked rice, not raw. Any plain white rice works, and leftover rice would serve. It needs to simmer in the broth until falling apart before it will pass through a sieve.
- CreamCream of the period was generally lighter than today's heavy cream, closer to light cream or half-and-half. Add it off the boil and reheat gently — a hard boil after the cream goes in will curdle it.
- SeasoningSeason at the end, after reduction, as the recipe directs. A grating of nutmeg is often found in white poultry soups of this kind.
- YieldAbout six cups after reduction, serving four as a first course.
Potage à la reine — the queen's soup — is a French court name generally traced to the sixteenth century and often attributed, by tradition rather than record, to Marguerite de Valois or to Catherine de' Medici's kitchen. In classical usage it meant a white soup of pounded poultry thickened with almonds, breadcrumbs or rice and enriched with cream, and by the eighteenth century it was one of the fixed names of the French repertoire that English and American cooks borrowed wholesale. What is interesting here is the descent: a dish of the royal table has become a way of using up the bones of Sunday's roast — a grand French name put on the table for the cost of a carcass, two quarts of water and half a cup of cream.