No. 298

Chicken and Leek Soup

Potage a la Volaille et aux Poireaux

Put into a saucepan one chicken, weighting three pounds. Let it be very fresh, drawn and singed; add a small split knuckle of veal, moisten with four quarts of good broth, and boil up the liquid; skim and let simmer uninterruptedly for three hours. After the chicken is three-quarters done, remove it and lift off the skin; mince up the flesh, and put this into a saucepan, with the white part of twelve leeks, cut in two inch lengths, then lengthwise in four, and blanched in boiling salted water; drain them and put them on to cook with the minced chicken. After all is well done, pour it into the soup tureen; season the broth properly, and strain it through a fine, damp napkin; add this to the tureen and serve. Have a separate garnishing of small timbales, made with eight egg-yolks, one pint of cream, salt, sugar, and nutmeg, strained through a sieve; fill some buttered timbale molds (No. 4, Fig. 137), with this preparation, poach them (No. 152), then unmold, cut them in two crosswise, and lay them in a vegetable dish with a little broth added. Serve the garnishing separately at the same time as the soup.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is really two recipes: a clear chicken-and-leek broth, and a set egg custard (a royale) served alongside. The custard is the fussy part; the soup itself is straightforward once the quantities are read in modern terms.

The hinge: pull the chicken earlyThe bird comes out at three-quarters done, which for a 3 lb chicken in simmering broth is likely well under an hour rather than the full three; the pot goes on simmering while the picked flesh is held aside so it does not turn to string.
Scale and yieldFour quarts of broth simmered for three hours will lose a good deal to evaporation; the finished quantity is meant for a large table. Halve everything for a household pot.
Knuckle of vealA split veal knuckle is the shank joint, sold today as veal osso buco or soup bone; it is there purely for gelatin and body. A butcher will need to be asked in advance. Veal neck bones or a pig's trotter do the same work.
Drawn and singedDrawn means gutted, singed means the pinfeather stubble burned off over a flame. Both are done for you now; a supermarket bird needs nothing but a rinse and a check inside the cavity for the giblet packet.
Twelve leeksTwelve leeks of the size sold today would be a great deal of white; six to eight large ones give a workable volume. Cut in two-inch lengths, quartered lengthwise, then blanched two to three minutes in salted water so they stay pale and lose their raw bite.
Straining through a damp napkinA clean linen napkin wrung out in cold water, laid in a sieve, is the period equivalent of doubled damp cheesecloth. The water stops the cloth from drinking up your broth and catches the last of the fat and scum.
The timbales are a royaleEight yolks to one pint of cream is a rich custard, seasoned with salt, a pinch of sugar and nutmeg only. Strain it, fill small buttered dariole or timbale molds no more than three-quarters full, and poach in a water bath until just set; the water must never boil or the custard curdles and weeps.
UnmoldingLet the poached custards stand five minutes before turning out, then cut crosswise. They are meant to be firm enough to hold a clean edge and are held warm in a little broth until the soup goes to the table.

A Little History

This is No. 298 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he wrote after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The French title tells you which tradition it belongs to: not the Scottish cock-a-leekie of long-boiled fowl and prunes, but the classical potage, where the broth is clarified, strained through cloth and served with a garnish presented separately. The custard timbales are a royale, a standard garnish of the classical repertoire, cut into shapes and dropped into consommes; Ranhofer's habit of cross-referencing his own numbered entries (No. 152 for poaching, Fig. 137 for the mold) reflects a book written for professional kitchens where those techniques and that exact mold were already on the shelf. The leek, cheap and everywhere, is doing the same job here that it does in humbler soups, but it has been trimmed to its white and blanched before it is allowed near the tureen.