No. 268

Puree of Carrots a la Crecy

Puree de Carottes a la Crecy

Only use the red part of the carrot for this soup; mince up two pounds of red carrots, cutting them with a knife into thin lengthwise slices. Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan on the fire, and when it begins to heat, add to it two ounces of onions, and fry for one instant; then add the red carrots, and continue to fry slowly without letting it attain a color; moisten with three quarts of broth, salt; add a bunch of parsley, celery, and bay leaf, and boil until the carrots are entirely done; then put in half a pound of rice previously blanched, and cooked in consomme; drain, and mash the carrots and rice. Moisten this puree with the broth, and if it be too thick add some white broth to it; strain through a sieve or tammy, and return it to a clean saucepan; heat it to a boiling point, stirring continually, and bearing on the bottom of the saucepan with the spoon, to prevent the puree from adhering; let to boil slowly on one side of the saucepan only, for twenty minutes, removing all the scum and fat from the surface as quickly as it appears; season with salt, and sugar and when ready to serve incorporate gradually into it two ounces of fine butter, stirring the soup with a spoon until all the butter melts, and serve at the same time small quarter inch squares of bread-crumbs fried in butter. Rice, noodles, and Japanese pearls can also be served as garnishings for Crecy soup.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's carrot puree is straightforward but written for a brigade with stockpots and a tammy cloth. A few of his terms and proportions need translating.

The red part onlyOlder carrot varieties were likelier to have a pale, woody core that cooks cut away, leaving the outer flesh. Most modern carrots need no such trimming; on very large carrots, discard any core that looks fibrous or discoloured.
Scale and yieldTwo pounds of carrots, three quarts of broth and half a pound of rice makes roughly 3 to 3 1/2 quarts of finished soup, or 10 to 12 first-course servings. Halve everything for a household pot.
Sweat, don't brownThe hinge of the recipe is frying the carrots and onions "without letting it attain a color." Any browning turns the soup muddy and dulls the clear orange Ranhofer wanted. Keep the heat low and the pan covered.
The riceHalf a pound is dry weight, blanched in water first to rinse off surface starch, then simmered in consomme. It is the thickener; there is no roux here. Any short or medium grain white rice works.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted cloth through which the puree was forced with a wooden pestle. A blender followed by a fine-mesh sieve gives the same texture in a fraction of the time.
"Boil slowly on one side"The pan is set off-center over the heat so the soup simmers on one edge only, driving scum and fat to the cool side where they can be lifted off. This is the classic depouillage, and it is worth doing: it is what makes the finished puree clean-tasting.
Mounting the butterRanhofer says only to stir the butter in gradually when ready to serve; standard practice is to add it off the heat, a little at a time. If the soup boils afterwards the emulsion can break and the surface go greasy.
SugarA cautious pinch. Period carrot varieties were probably less sweet than today's, so taste before adding any at all.
Japanese pearlsSmall tapioca or sago pearls, sold as a soup garnish in the period. Cook them separately in broth and add at service, as with the rice or noodles.

A Little History

"A la Crecy" is one of the fixed labels of classical French cookery: wherever it appears on a menu, carrots are the point. The name is generally traced to Crecy-en-Ponthieu in Picardy or to Crecy-la-Chapelle in Brie, both of which have long claimed the reputation for the finest carrots, and the dispute between them is old enough that no cookbook settles it. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, printed this in The Epicurean (1894), a book that set out to record the entire repertoire of the restaurant in something close to encyclopaedic order -- hence the numbered entries and the long run of purees on either side of this one. The technique here is pure haute cuisine of the period: vegetables sweated in butter, a starch cooked separately in consomme to bind, the whole forced through cloth, skimmed patiently, and finished with raw butter. It is also a reminder of how much soup a nineteenth-century kitchen made at once, three quarts being an ordinary working batch rather than a feast.