No. 247

Cream of Asparagus a la St. Vallier

Creme d'Asperges a la St. Vallier

Mince up fine, five medium-sized onions, throw them into boiling salted water, and let them boil for five minutes, then drain, and fry them in a quarter of a pound of butter without coloring; add four heaping tablespoonfuls of flour, and let fry slowly for several minutes, then put in with them two pounds of green and tender asparagus, cut in one-inch length pieces, washed several times, and blanched for ten minutes in boiling, salted water. Moisten with two quarts of broth, and when the asparagus is done, drain it off, and mash it in a mortar diluting it with its own broth; pass all through a fine sieve, and put the puree into a saucepan, to heat; season with salt, sugar and nutmeg, and after it begins to boil, remove all the fat arising to the surface; just when ready to serve, thicken the soup with raw egg-yolks, diluted in cream, and incorporate therein some fine butter. Serve in a soup tureen with a garnishing of green peas and small quenelles, three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, laid through a cornet on a buttered pan, and poached in some boiling salted water, poured into the pan; when done, drain them, and add them to the soup.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French veloute-style cream soup built on a roux, pureed vegetables and a final egg-and-cream liaison. Two things decide whether it works: the liaison must never boil, and the asparagus should not be cooked to death if you want the soup green.

The liaison is the hingeWhisk the yolks and cream together, temper them with a ladle of the hot soup, then stir the mixture back in off the heat. If the soup returns to a boil after that point the yolks curdle and the texture is finished; hold it below about 180F and serve at once.
Quantities and yieldTwo quarts of broth plus two pounds of asparagus should give something like 8 to 10 first-course servings. A quarter pound of butter is 1 stick (about 115 g); four heaping tablespoons of flour is more than the 1/4 cup that four level spoons would give -- call it a third of a cup -- a heavy thickening for a soup that will also be finished with egg.
BrothThe recipe says only 'broth'; in this book that most likely means a light white stock, veal or chicken, rather than beef or anything strongly reduced. A light unsalted chicken stock is a sensible modern substitute; season at the end, since the flour concentrates whatever salt is already there.
Blanching timesTen minutes of blanching plus simmering in the broth will leave the asparagus grey-green and soft, which is what a sieve-and-mortar kitchen wanted. If you care about colour, blanch 2 to 3 minutes, cook only until tender in the broth, and puree promptly.
Mortar and sieveA blender does in thirty seconds what the mortar did in ten minutes. Pass the puree through a fine chinois or a sieve afterwards anyway; asparagus fibre is stringy and no blender removes it entirely.
Seasoning with sugarThe recipe gives no quantity, only 'salt, sugar and nutmeg'. The sugar is presumably corrective rather than sweetening, offsetting the slight bitterness of asparagus and the flour; add it a little at a time and stop before it reads as sweet. Nutmeg should be grated fresh and used sparingly.
The quenellesA 'cornet' is a paper piping cone; a small piping bag with a 5 mm plain tip gives the same three-sixteenths-inch threads. Pipe them onto a buttered pan, then pour boiling salted water gently over them in the pan so they set without breaking, and lift them out with a skimmer. Ranhofer does not specify the forcemeat here, so a fine chicken or veal quenelle mixture from elsewhere in the book would have to be supplied.
SkimmingBringing the puree to a boil before the liaison is what drives the butterfat to the surface so it can be removed. Skip the skim and the soup tastes greasy under the cream.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised the way a professional French kitchen of the period thought: soups by base, then by garnish. The suffix a la St. Vallier arrives with the finish, the peas and the tiny piped quenelles, in the same way that Ranhofer's other creams are distinguished by croutons, profiteroles or a julienne. Naming garnishes after places and persons was standard in nineteenth-century haute cuisine and let a cook order a whole composition with two words; St. Vallier is a town in the Drome, though the connection, as with most such tags, is decorative rather than documented. The soup itself belongs to the family of cremes thickened first with a roux and then finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison, a technique that is said to have become less common in restaurant kitchens over the twentieth century.