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Peasant Soup
Cut into square-shaped pieces two carrots, an eighth of a cabbage, half a turnip, half an onion, one potato, and two or three leaves of celery. Steam them for ten minutes with two ounces of butter in a stewpan, then moisten with three pints of white broth, and season with one-half tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper. Cook for thirty minutes, and when ready to serve and six thin slices of bread.
A plain vegetable potage of the sort every professional kitchen kept going as a matter of course. Two things in the text need attention: the seasoning is heavy by modern taste, and the last line has a printer's error.
- "And six thin slices of bread"This is a typesetting slip for add six thin slices of bread. The bread goes into the tureen or the bowls and the soup is poured over it, which is how peasant soups were built long before croutons.
- White brothA light, unbrowned stock — veal or chicken bones simmered without roasting, so the liquid stays pale. Unsalted chicken stock is the closest supermarket equivalent; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced.
- Cut the vegetables to one size"Square-shaped pieces" means a rough dice, and the point is uniformity, not precision. Half an inch works: the carrot and turnip will be tender in the same thirty minutes as the potato.
- The pepperA full teaspoon of pepper in three pints is aggressive for most palates today. Start with a quarter teaspoon and correct at the end; the half tablespoon of salt is also a lot if your stock is already seasoned.
- Steam them for ten minutesThis is a sweat, not steaming — vegetables and butter in a covered pan over low heat, so they soften and sweeten without colouring. If they brown, the finished soup loses its pale, clean look.
- Quantities and yieldThree pints is six cups, giving four modest portions or six with the bread. An eighth of a cabbage means an eighth of a whole head, roughly 4 oz.
- FinishingNothing here binds the soup, so it stays thin and broth-like by design. If it seems watery, mash a few pieces of the potato against the side of the pan rather than adding flour.
Soupe paysanne is the French kitchen's formal name for the informal thing: whatever root vegetables are to hand, sweated in butter and moistened with stock, poured over bread in the bowl. The bread is the older half of the dish — a soupe originally meant the sop of bread itself, with the liquid named after it, and pouring broth over stale slices is a long-standing way European households ate soup.