No. 288

Benoiton Soup

Potage a la Benoiton

Have half a pound of carrots, a quarter of a pound of turnips, a quarter of a pound of celery, half a pound of leeks, half an ounce of parsnips, and a quarter of a pound of onions; blanch separately the carrots, turnips, celery, and parsnips cut into three-sixteenth inch squares, and mince the leeks and onions. Put six ounces of butter into a saucepan on the fire, and when the butter is warm, throw in the onions, afterward the leeks, letting them fry for two minutes, and then the remainder of the vegetables; fry all together without attaining a color, and moisten with four quarts of broth, adding bouquet of parsley garnished with thyme, garlic, and bay leaf, and boil all slowly for one hour; remove the bouquet, and add to the soup half a pound of peeled tomatoes cut in two, squeezed out, and divided into small half inch squares. Season and continue cooking for another half hour, then add a quart of puree of fresh peas, one ounce of rice, blanched and cooked in consomme, string beans cut lozenge-shaped, some asparagus tops and a pluche of chervil.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's vegetable soup is essentially a very fine printanière built on a butter sweat, with the green garnishes added at the last moment. The work is all in the knife.

The cut is the pointThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm: a small, uniform dice, coarser than a classic brunoise. The soup reads as coarse and muddled if the carrot, turnip, celery and parsnip are not the same size, since they are meant to be eaten by the spoonful in suspension.
Blanch separately, then refreshEach root goes into its own pot of boiling salted water for a minute or two and comes out before it softens. Blanching separately keeps the carrot from tinting the turnip and parsnip, and takes the raw edge off before the butter stage.
ButterSix ounces (1½ sticks) for four quarts is generous by current taste and will leave a visible slick. Three ounces sweats the vegetables perfectly well; the fat here is for flavour and gloss, not for cooking.
"Broth"In The Epicurean this means a light unclarified beef or veal stock, lightly salted. Four quarts of a modern reduced or salted commercial stock will overwhelm the vegetables — dilute it or use a mild homemade stock.
The pea puréeThe pea purée -- A quart of fresh pea purée is about a fifth of the finished soup and is what gives it body and colour. Fresh shelled peas cooked briefly and passed through a sieve; good frozen peas are an honest substitute. Add it near the end and do not boil hard afterward, or the green dulls to olive.
Green garnishes go in lastString beans cut in lozenges and asparagus tips need two to four minutes. Cook them separately in salted water, refresh, and drop them into the finished soup to warm through rather than letting them sit through the half-hour tomato stage.
Pluche of chervilA pluche is the leaf tips picked from the stems, scattered over the tureen at service. Chervil's anise note fades with heat, so it is added at the last moment rather than cooked in. Flat parsley leaves are the usual stand-in, though the flavour is not the same.
RiceOne ounce is about two tablespoons, cooked apart in consommé so its starch does not cloud the soup. It is a garnish for texture, not a thickener.
YieldThe pot finishes at roughly five quarts with the purée and garnishes. That is twelve to sixteen soup-plate servings in the service this book assumes; halve everything for a household.

A Little History

Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's, filled The Epicurean (1894) with dishes named for the Paris of his youth, and Benoîton is one of them: the name is generally traced to Victorien Sardou's 1865 comedy La Famille Benoîton, a satire of the new moneyed bourgeoisie that was such a hit its title became shorthand for a fashionable style — there was a chignon Benoîton, a Benoîton ribbon, a Benoîton hat. Attaching the name to a dish was a chef's way of saying it was of the moment, in the same spirit that later cooks named things after singers and racehorses. The soup itself is a printanière in all but title: a butter-sweated brunoise of roots moistened with broth and finished with the spring vegetables — peas, asparagus, string beans, chervil — that marked the season on a nineteenth-century menu. Its position in the book, wedged alphabetically between Bennett Soup and Bouillabaisse, is a reminder that The Epicurean was compiled as a working reference for a large brigade rather than as a book to read through.