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Red Bean Puree Soup
Put on the fire in a saucepan enough red beans previously soaked in cold water for four hours and moisten with some white broth; cook till soft and rub through a sieve, adding a couple of ounces of salt pork blanched, some onion, carrot and a garnished bouquet, together with a little pepper. Cook thoroughly for one hour, and strain, adding half a glass of claret, and serve with small croutons of fried bread.
Oscar's method is compressed to the point of confusion: as written, the aromatics arrive after the beans have already been sieved. Cook them together from the start and the soup makes sense.
- Fix the orderOrder of operations -- The original sieves the beans first, then simmers the puree with the salt pork, onion, carrot and bouquet for an hour and strains them out at the end, which does work. Simmering the soaked beans together with the blanched salt pork, onion, carrot and bouquet in the broth from the start and then sieving is the simpler route.
- White brothA light, uncolored stock — veal or chicken made from unroasted bones. Any mild chicken stock works; avoid dark beef stock, which fights the claret.
- Red beansKidney beans or the smaller red beans used in Creole cooking. Four hours of soaking is on the short side for dried beans; overnight is better, and expect 1 to 1.5 hours of simmering for softness. Dried red kidney beans must reach a full boil for at least ten minutes early in cooking to destroy phytohaemagglutinin — a full simmer for an hour handles this, but do not cook them in a slow cooker at low temperature.
- Salt pork, blanchedBlanching means a few minutes in boiling water to draw off excess salt and any off flavor. Pancetta or unsmoked bacon substitutes; skip the blanching only if the cure is mild, and salt the finished soup last in any case.
- Garnished bouquetBouquet garni — parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string or wrapped in leek green. Tie it so it comes out cleanly before sieving.
- Half a glass of claretClaret is dry red Bordeaux. "Half a glass" is an imprecise period measure; depending on the glass intended it could be anywhere from about 2 to 4 fl oz. Add it off the heat or with only a brief simmer, or the freshness is lost.
- ConsistencyBean purees thicken hard as they sit. Thin with more broth to the consistency of heavy cream just before serving.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. As a working scale, roughly a pound of dried beans with about 2 quarts of broth gives six to eight portions. Fry the croutons in butter or the rendered salt pork fat and add them at the table so they stay crisp.
This is classic hotel-kitchen work of the Escoffier era: a legume brought to a smooth puree over a stock base, finished with a splash of wine and served with fried croutons -- the same template that produces puree Soissonnaise from white beans or puree Conde, the red-bean version conventionally said to be named for the Conde family and usually finished with red wine. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, collected the working repertoire of the Waldorf's kitchens, and it contains a great many puree soups. The claret gives a small acid lift against the starchy heaviness of the bean, added at the end for the same reason a modern cook finishes a bean soup with vinegar.