No. 296

Champetre Soup

Potage Champetre

Despumate for twenty-five minutes on the side of the range, two quarts of thick white soup stock (No. 195), with a handful of mushroom parings added. Take some long French rolls called "flutes," each one being one inch and a half in diameter; scrape off the superficial upper crust, and cut them transversely into a quarter of an inch thick slices; brown these on one side with clarified butter, then drain them off, leaving the butter in the pan. Cover the toasted sides of these slices with a paste made of fresh Swiss, Chestershire, and Parmesan cheeses, pounded and moistened with a little beer and Marsala wine, finishing with a pinch of cayenne pepper; dust this paste over with grated parmesan, return the bread to the pan, and put it into a hot oven to glaze the cheese, then range them on plates. Skim all the fat from the soup, strain and put it back into the saucepan, add half a gill of soubise puree (No. 723), mingled with four egg-yolks, butter and grated nutmeg; pour it into a soup tureen and serve at the same time as the cheese crusts.

← No. 295 Chamberlain Soup Soups & Broths No. 297 Chartreuse Soup →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going, so the work here is mostly assembly. Two things need translating: his vocabulary, and the point at which the soup can be ruined.

The hinge: the egg-yolk liaisonFour yolks beaten with the soubise purée go into the strained soup off the heat, and the pot must never return to a boil or even a strong simmer. Temper with a ladle of hot soup first, then stir it back in over the lowest flame until it thickens slightly; above roughly 180F the yolks curdle and no amount of straining will bring the soup back.
DespumateTo simmer at a bare tremble on the cool side of the range while skimming the grey scum as it rises. Twenty-five minutes at a low simmer, skimmer in hand, and no lid.
Thick white soup stock (No. 195)A thickened white base; No. 195 is not given here, but a well-made velouté of chicken or veal, about the consistency of pouring cream, will stand in for two quarts.
GillA gill is four fluid ounces, so half a gill of soubise puree is about a quarter cup. Soubise (No. 723) is an onion puree -- onions cooked pale and soft, then sieved -- though the exact make-up of Ranhofer's No. 723 is not given here.
FlutesA flûte is a thin baguette, an inch and a half across. Modern baguettes run wider; use a thin ficelle or slice a standard baguette on a slight bias to get rounds of a similar size, cut a quarter inch thick.
The cheeses"Swiss" here means Gruyere or Emmental, and "Chestershire" is Cheshire, a crumbly English cow's-milk cheese available from good cheesemongers; a young Lancashire is the closest substitute. Grate rather than pound, and bind with a spoonful of beer and Marsala into a spreadable paste.
A hot ovenTake that as 450F for glazing the cheese crusts, or use a broiler at close range. They want two or three minutes only, until the surface blisters and browns.
Yield and serviceTwo quarts of finished soup serves eight as a first course. The crusts are passed at the same time on a separate plate, not floated in the tureen, so they stay crisp.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the cooking he oversaw at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house habit of numbering everything so that one recipe leans on three others. The name is a small joke of the French repertoire: champetre means rustic or pastoral, yet the soup is a cream velouté finished with an egg-yolk liaison, onion puree, butter and nutmeg, and served with cheese toasts glazed in the oven, which is about as far from a farmhouse pot as a kitchen can get. The rustic note is generally taken to be the mushroom parings, thrifty trimmings simmered in the stock for flavour, and the browned bread, which in genuinely country soups would have been the whole dish rather than a garnish. Cheshire and Parmesan alongside Gruyere in one paste is characteristic of the period's confident mixing of imported cheeses, then a marker of an expensive kitchen with access to a good import trade.