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Cream of Lentils
Soak one pint of lentils in cold water for four hours, then place them in a saucepan and boil with two quarts of water, one carrot, one onion, two ounces of salt pork, six whole peppers, a garnished bunch of parsley, one-half tablespoonful of salt and bones of one partridge. Cook for forty-five minutes, and then rub through a sieve; cut half the breast of a partridge in slices, place them in the soup tureen with one ounce of butter, pour over the puree, and serve with a handful of fried sippets of bread, suppressing the parsley.
A game-stock lentil purée from the Waldorf's soup station, built around the carcass of a bird that had already been served. Nothing here is difficult, but two details in the original assume a kitchen that always had roast partridge on hand.
- The partridge is meant to be cooked alreadyThe partridge is probably meant to be cooked already -- the recipe does not say so, but it calls only for the bones and for half the breast, which reads like a bird already roasted and carved. In any case, breast slices laid in a tureen and covered with hot puree will not cook through if raw, so roast or pan-sear the bird first, use the carcass for the stock and the sliced breast for the garnish.
- If you have no partridgeQuail, pheasant or squab bones work the same way, as does a browned chicken carcass, though the flavour is milder. The soup is perfectly good without any bird at all — it simply becomes a plain lentil purée.
- Lentils and the soakOne pint is about two cups, roughly 14 oz dry, and brown or green lentils are what is wanted — red ones collapse into mush and pass the sieve too easily. Modern lentils need no four-hour soak; an hour is generous, and none at all is fine if you extend the simmer by ten or fifteen minutes.
- Garnished bunch of parsleyA bouquet garni: parsley stems tied with thyme and a bay leaf, or simply a tight bundle of parsley. "Suppressing the parsley" at the end means fish the bundle out and discard it before serving.
- SaltHalf a tablespoon plus two ounces of salt pork into two quarts is on the heavy side once the soup reduces and is sieved. Use a light hand at the start and correct at the end.
- Rubbing through a sieveA food mill with the medium plate does this in a minute and leaves the lentil skins behind, which is the point. A blender will purée but keeps the skins, so pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the texture Oscar meant.
- SippetsSmall cubes or triangles of bread fried in butter or clarified fat — croutons. Fry them at the last moment and pass them separately so they stay crisp.
- Consistency and yieldTwo quarts of water reduces and then thickens as the lentils are sieved in; thin with additional stock if it is stiffer than heavy cream. Serves six to eight as a first course.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms from 1893 and his 1896 book is essentially the hotel's working repertoire set down in print. A purée of lentils enriched with game bones is a classic economy of the large brigade kitchen, in which a handful of sliced breast turned a peasant pulse into a course a hotel could charge for. French practice of the period called a plain lentil purée purée Esaü, after the birthright sold for a mess of pottage. The "cream" in the title refers to the smooth sieved texture, not to any dairy; no cream appears in the recipe at all.