No. 285

Barley Soup with Celery

Potage d'Orge au Celeri

Put half a pound of butter in a saucepan on the fire, and when it begins to heat, dredge in ten ounces of small pearl barley, well freed of all dust and impurities; let cook for a few minutes, then moisten with three quarts of white broth, and stir continually until it comes to a boil; salt, and cook for two hours and a half, till the barley be thoroughly done; adding three-quarters of a pound of celery roots cut in quarter inch squares, and blanched in boiling salted water for ten minutes. After the celery is well cooked; and just when serving the soup, taste it to see whether the seasoning be correct, then add a thickening of egg-yolks, cream and fine butter (No. 175).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a hotel kitchen, so the quantities are large and the cross-references assume you own the rest of the book. Two things carry this soup: barley cooked long enough to release its starch, and a final egg-and-cream liaison that must not boil.

The liaison is the hingeNo. 175 is Ranhofer's standard thickening of egg yolks beaten with cream and finished with butter. Temper it with a ladle of hot soup, stir it in off the heat, and never let the pot return to a boil or the yolks will curdle into threads. Reckon roughly 4 yolks and a cup of cream for three quarts.
White brothA pale, unroasted stock of veal and/or fowl, unseasoned and uncoloured. A light chicken stock is the practical substitute; avoid anything brown or heavily reduced, which will muddy both the colour and the delicate celery flavour.
Celery rootsThis means celeriac, not the stalks. Three-quarters of a pound is about one medium knob, peeled hard to remove the fibrous skin, then diced a quarter inch and blanched ten minutes as directed so it finishes tender in the soup rather than crunchy.
Pearl barley and the butterTen ounces is about 1 1/2 cups. Half a pound of butter to that amount of barley is generous even by 1894 standards; 4 ounces toasts the grain perfectly well and gives a soup that is rich rather than greasy.
Cooking timeTwo and a half hours will reduce modern pearl barley to near-porridge, which is more or less the intent here, but check at 60 to 75 minutes. Keep extra broth at hand: barley drinks liquid steadily and the pot will thicken as it stands.
Fire management"On the fire" means over direct heat. Once it boils, drop to the barest simmer and stir the bottom periodically; toasted barley starch scorches easily in a heavy pan.
YieldSomewhat less than the three quarts of broth started with, since the barley absorbs liquid and the pot reduces over two and a half hours; enough for ten to twelve as a first course. It thickens considerably on cooling, so thin leftovers with hot broth and reheat gently rather than adding more liaison.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in French-trained order: hundreds of numbered soups, each cross-referenced to a stock or a garnish elsewhere in the book. Barley soups belong to an older northern European tradition of thick, sustaining grain potages, but the treatment here is thoroughly Parisian — the grain is first toasted in butter like a rice pilaf, then finished with a liaison of egg yolks and cream. Celeriac, still sold in American markets chiefly as "celery root," gave nineteenth-century cooks a sweet, nutty vegetable that held its shape in long cooking. The dish shows the period's preference for a smooth, pale, richly bound soup as the opening of a formal dinner, in contrast to the clear consommé.