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Macedoine Soup
Line the bottom of a saucepan with some thin slices of ham, then put in an equal quantity of turnips, potatoes and onions, about three of each, and cut up very small; pour in some stock, season with pepper and salt, and let simmer gently until cooked to a pulp. Pass the soup and vegetables through a fine hair sieve, return it to the saucepan, pour in one pint of cream, and stir it by the fire for a few minutes. When ready to be served, pour the soup into a tureen.
A plain purée of root vegetables built on a ham base, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where quantities were assumed rather than stated. Two things need filling in: the amount of stock and the handling of the cream.
- Stock quantityThe original gives none. Nine small vegetables and a few slices of ham will take roughly 2 quarts of stock; add enough to cover by an inch, then thin at the end if the purée is too stiff. The finished soup should coat a spoon lightly, not stand up in it.
- Pass through a fine hair sieveA horsehair sieve was the standard purée tool of the period, pushed through with a wooden pestle. A food mill on the fine plate, or a blender followed by a chinois, does the same job faster and gives a smoother result.
- The hamThis is the seasoning, not a garnish — it lines the pan so its fat and salt flavour everything above. Use two or three thin slices of a dry-cured ham or a piece of unsmoked gammon. Salt at the very end, since the ham and the stock both carry salt already.
- Cooked to a pulpTurnip, potato and onion cut small will collapse in 40 to 50 minutes at a bare simmer. Boiling hard breaks the potato starch down into gluiness; keep it barely trembling.
- After the cream goes inStir it "by the fire" means gentle reheating only. Once a pint of cream is in, hold the pot below a simmer — hard boiling risks the cream separating, especially against a salty ham stock, and the potato starch will thicken the soup further than you want.
- A pint of creamFull period richness. Half that, or a mix of cream and whole milk, gives a soup most modern palates prefer; add it gradually and stop when the texture suits you.
- YieldAbout 2 to 2½ quarts, serving six to eight as a first course. A tureen was the standard service; ladle at the table.
Macédoine in French cookery means a mixture of things cut small — most often a dice of assorted vegetables or fruit — and the name is traditionally traced to the Macedonian empire of Alexander, taken as a byword for many peoples jumbled together. Here the term survives only in the mixture of turnip, potato and onion, since the soup is passed to a purée and nothing remains visibly diced. Oscar Tschirky, the maître d'hôtel whose name carried the Waldorf's 1896 Cook Book, was not a chef, and the recipes he collected read as kitchen memoranda: the proportions a professional would already know are left out, and the instructions cover only the sequence. The ham-lined pan is an old European economy, using a cheap salted meat to give body and savour to vegetables that have none of their own — the same logic behind a ham hock in a pot of beans.