No. 275

Puree of Oatmeal Toulousaine

Puree d'Avenas Toulousaine

Put three pints of water into a saucepan; when it boils, drop into it like rain, six ounces of oatmeal coarsely ground, salt and one ounce of butter, let cook for three hours, dilute it with three pints of white broth, and pass it through a tammy, return it to the fire stirring it continually, and at the first boil remove it to the side of the fire, and let boil and despumate for twenty-five minutes; skim all the fat, season with salt, nutmeg and sugar, and just when ready to serve, incorporate into it a piece of fine butter; pour the soup into a soup tureen with a garnishing of bread croutons an inch in diameter sprinkled over with butter and browned in the oven, also croutons made of firm Royal cream (No. 241), using whites of eggs instead of yolks, poached in a slack oven, and cut into squares.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's oatmeal purée is a straightforward cream soup buried under professional French kitchen vocabulary. Once the terms are translated, the only demanding parts are the long cooking and the two-part garnish.

Rain the oatmeal inScattering the meal slowly into boiling water while stirring is the hinge of the recipe: dumped in at once it clumps and the lumps never break down, and no amount of sieving afterward will save the texture. Keep the water at a full boil and add the oats in a thin stream.
Coarsely ground oatmealThis means pinhead or steel-cut oats, not rolled flakes. Rolled oats will cook to paste in twenty minutes and give a slack, gluey soup rather than the three-hour extraction the recipe is built around.
White brothAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, lightly seasoned or unseasoned. Use a good low-sodium chicken stock; the soup is salted again later, so avoid anything already salty.
Pass it through a tammyA tammy was a fine worsted cloth through which soup was forced with a wooden spatula or wrung between two people. A fine-mesh conical sieve pressed with a ladle does the same work, and a blender before sieving saves considerable effort.
DespumateTo let the soup boil gently at the side of the fire so starch and fat rise as scum, then skim it off. Twenty-five minutes at a bare simmer on a low burner, skimming several times, is what is being asked for.
Nutmeg and sugarOnly a pinch of each. The sugar is there to round the cereal flavour, not to sweeten; the soup should read savoury.
Royal cream croutonsA savoury custard baked in a buttered pan set in a water bath until just set, chilled, and cut into small squares. Made with whites only it stays pale and firm enough to cut. A slack oven is 275-300F; the water bath is essential or the custard curdles and weeps.
Finishing butterAdd the last piece of butter off the heat, swirling it in just before the soup goes to the tureen. Boiled after that point it separates and the fat you skimmed comes back as slick on the surface.
YieldSix pints of liquid go in and some cooks away; expect roughly two and a half quarts, or eight to ten servings as a first course.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York. The "Toulousaine" tag in French cookery is generally taken to point to garnish rather than geography, and here it seems to be doing what such names usually do in Ranhofer: distinguishing one of dozens of purfees by its trimming, in this case buttered bread croutons paired with squares of set savoury custard. What is striking is the ingredient. Oatmeal was cheap invalid food and breakfast porridge in the English-speaking world, and putting it through a tammy with white veal broth, nutmeg, a little sugar and finishing butter is the classical kitchen's standard move: take a humble starch, extract it slowly, strain it smooth, and enrich it until it can be served on porcelain between the fish and the entrfees.