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Herb Soup with Parmesan Cheese
Wash in plenty of water a head of young celery, one handful each of sorrel, chervil and chives, a few sprigs of parsley, and a small quantity of tarragon; drain the herbs thoroughly and cut them into pieces. Put them in a saucepan with three pints of clear broth, and boil gently till tender. Cut some slices of French rolls into pieces about the size of a quarter of a dollar, dip them in hot butter, and roll in finely grated Parmesan cheese, giving them a good coating. Spread a sheet of white paper over a baking tin, arrange the pieces of bread on top, and bake until lightly browned; then add them to the soup when in the tureen.
A clear herb broth with cheese croutons floated on at the last moment. Nothing here is difficult; the details that matter are sourcing the herbs and keeping the croutons crisp.
- Add the croutons at the tableOscar is specific that they go in "when in the tureen" — that is the hinge of the dish. Cheese-coated bread dropped into the pot loses its coating and turns to paste within a minute or two. Ladle the soup, then float the croutons.
- Three pints of brothSix cups in US measure. "Clear broth" means a light, well-skimmed stock; the recipe does not say which, though veal or chicken would be the likely house stock. Anything cloudy or heavily reduced fights the point of the soup, which is transparency and herb flavour.
- Sorrel and chervilNeither is a supermarket staple now. Sorrel turns up at farmers' markets in spring and is worth seeking for its sharpness; chervil is often sold only as seed. If you must substitute, a little flat parsley plus a pinch of tarragon approximates chervil, but nothing really replaces sorrel's acidity.
- "A head of young celery"Not a modern full-grown bunch. Use the pale inner heart of one head, leaves included, perhaps a third of what you would buy today.
- Boil gently till tenderFifteen to twenty minutes is ample. Sorrel collapses and goes olive-drab almost immediately, which is normal; long cooking past this point only flattens the chervil and chives, so consider holding back a portion of the chives to add at the end.
- Avoid bare aluminium or cast ironSorrel is high in oxalic acid and will pick up a metallic taste and grey colour in a reactive pan. Stainless or enamelled is the choice.
- The croutons"French rolls" means a light white crusty roll; a baguette sliced thin does the job. "The size of a quarter of a dollar" is roughly an inch across. Dip in melted butter, press into grated Parmesan, and bake. The recipe specifies no temperature, only "until lightly browned"; a moderate oven, around 375F, will get there in eight to ten minutes.
- The sheet of white paperParchment. The paper is there so the melting cheese does not weld itself to the tin, and parchment does the job better than the plain paper of 1896.
- YieldSix cups of broth serves four generously, or six as a first course.
Oscar Tschirky's book gathers the repertoire of a hotel kitchen that was still working in French, and this is a straightforward reading of the French soupe aux herbes — the same family as potage santé and the sorrel soups that appear all through nineteenth-century French cookery. The combination of sorrel, chervil, chives and tarragon is close to what French cooks call fines herbes, with sorrel added for acidity, and such soups carried a long-standing reputation as restorative spring food, eaten when the first green things appeared after a winter of roots and salted meat. The cheese croutons are the hotel touch: a plain herb broth given something to justify its place on a Waldorf menu. Note too the assumption that a kitchen has clear broth standing by at all times — the stockpot was the fixed point of a professional kitchen of this period, and many recipes in the book begin by drawing on it.