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Cream of Lettuce
Wash well three good-sized heads of lettuce, drain, chop, place them in a saucepan with about one-fourth pound of butter and cook for five minutes, stirring lightly. Moisten with two quarts of broth, and season with one tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper, and one-half teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, add a garnished bunch of parsley and four or five ounces of well cleaned raw rice; cover the saucepan and cook for forty-five minutes; then remove the parsley, and strain through a fine sieve. Clean the saucepan well, pour the soup into it again, and let it come nearly to the boil, stirring meanwhile with a spatula. Pour in one pint of sweet cream, stir it a little more, and turn it into a hot tureen. Serve with sippets of toast or croutons of fried bread.
A classic velouté-style purée thickened with rice rather than flour, scaled for a hotel kitchen. Two things need attention: the salt, and what forty-five minutes does to the colour of lettuce.
- The hinge: cream goes in off the heatBring the strained soup nearly to the boil, then add the cream and serve. Boiling after the cream is in will curdle it, particularly with a salty broth.
- SaltA tablespoon of salt assumes an unsalted house broth. With commercial stock, start with a teaspoon and correct at the end, after the cream has gone in and flattened the seasoning slightly.
- LettuceThe recipe names no variety; a firm head lettuce, butterhead or romaine, works well, while iceberg gives little flavour. Three good-sized heads is roughly 2 to 2.5 lb trimmed. Discard bruised outer leaves but keep the green ones; they carry the flavour.
- ColourForty-five minutes turns lettuce olive-drab, and the recipe gives no sign that this was thought a fault. If you want the pale green a modern eye prefers, cook the rice in the broth first and add the lettuce for the last ten minutes.
- Butter and riceOne-fourth pound of butter is one stick, 4 oz. Four to five ounces of raw rice is roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup; it is the only starch thickener, so use a starchy short or medium grain, not parboiled.
- Garnished bunch of parsleyA tied bundle — parsley stems with a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme — removed before straining. It is what a modern recipe would call a bouquet garni.
- Straining"Strain through a fine sieve" means force the solids through, not drain them off. A blender followed by a chinois or fine-mesh sieve does the same work in a fraction of the time; the sieve step still matters for texture.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast, distinct from croutons of fried bread. Either is served alongside or floated at the last moment.
- YieldTwo quarts of broth plus a pint of cream makes about ten cups — twelve first-course servings. Halve it comfortably for a household.
Cream soups built on a vegetable purée bound with rice were standard in the French repertoire that ran American hotel kitchens at the turn of the century, and Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf was among the most French of them. Rice as a thickener, rather than a roux, gives a lighter body, and it is often said to have suited delicate green vegetables — the same method underlies crème de laitue, crème d'oseille and their relatives. Cooked lettuce is unfamiliar to most American cooks now, but it was ordinary in French practice: braised in butter, stuffed, or turned into soup, often as a way of using heads that had begun to bolt in the kitchen garden.