No. 254

Cream of Cucumbers a la Sheppard

Creme de Concombres a la Sheppard

Peel or remove the green skin from the cucumbers, mince up two pounds of them, blanch them in boiling, salted water for ten minutes, then drain. Heat four ounces of butter in a saucepan; when very hot, add the cucumbers, and fry them colorless, moistening with two quarts of white broth; boil all slowly until the cucumbers are thoroughly done, and then drain and mash them in a mortar; thin out this puree with its own broth, and if still to thick, add some more white broth, and strain the whole through a tammy. Add one quart of veloute (No. 415), season with salt, sugar and nutmeg, and heat it up without boiling; remove all the white particles arising to the surface, and thicken the soup with egg-yolks, cream and fine butter (No. 175). Pour the soup very hot into a tureen with a good white of chicken garnishing allowing one ounce for each quart, and cut up into three-sixteenths of an inch squares.

← No. 253 Cream Chiffonnade with Cruste or of Leeks wi Soups & Broths No. 255 Cream of Green Corn a la Hermann →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic Delmonico cream soup built in three stages: a cucumber purée, a velouté base, and an egg-and-cream liaison. Nothing here is difficult, but the finish is unforgiving.

Never boil after the liaisonOnce the egg yolks, cream and butter go in, the soup must stay below a simmer — around 175F. A boil scrambles the yolks and the whole tureen turns grainy. The same applies to the reheating step before it: "heat it up without boiling."
White brothA pale, uncolored stock of veal or poultry, made from blanched bones and white vegetables so nothing browns. A good light chicken stock stands in; avoid anything roasted-dark, which will muddy the pale green.
Velouté (No. 415)Ranhofer's velouté is white broth thickened with a pale roux and simmered down. One quart is a substantial addition — expect to make it separately in advance rather than improvise.
The liaison (No. 175)Egg yolks beaten with cream, tempered with hot soup, then stirred back in off the heat, with cold butter finished last. For a quart of finished soup, figure two to three yolks and a few tablespoons of cream.
Mortar and tammyA tammy is a fine woolen straining cloth; a chinois lined with muslin, or a fine sieve, does the same work. A blender replaces the mortar entirely and gives a smoother purée, but still pass it through the sieve afterward — fiber and seed fragments will otherwise show.
The cucumbersTwo pounds peeled is roughly three or four medium-to-large field cucumbers. Modern seedless or English cucumbers save you halving and scraping; older field cucumbers should be seeded, and any with bitter stem ends trimmed back.
Fry them colorlessThe point of the four ounces of butter is flavor without color. Keep the heat moderate despite the instruction to have the butter "very hot" — the smallest bit of browning shows against a pale soup.
The garnishPoached or roasted chicken breast, no skin, cut in 3/16-inch dice — about a scant quarter-inch. One ounce per quart is a restrained scatter, not a chunky garnish.
YieldTwo quarts of broth plus a quart of velouté, allowing for reduction and for any extra broth added to thin the purée, gives on the order of two and a half to three quarts of finished soup: eight to twelve servings as a first course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef of Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries built on a small set of cross-referenced foundations — the velouté-and-cream liaison at No. 175 — so that base preparations can be invoked rather than repeated. Names like "à la Sheppard" attached to Delmonico dishes are often said to have been compliments to regular patrons or to particular dinners, a habit Ranhofer appears to follow throughout the book; the individual honored here is not identified in the text. Cucumber as a hot soup rather than a salad vegetable was well established in nineteenth-century French kitchens, where blanching and then stewing in butter tamed both its water content and its faint bitterness. The chicken-breast garnish measured by the ounce per quart, and diced to a stated fraction of an inch, is characteristic of the whole volume: Ranhofer was writing for professional cooks who would be held to the number.