No. 306

D'Osmont Soup

Potage a la D'Osmont

Mince up four ounces of carrot, two ounces of onions, and one ounce of celery, fry these in four ounces of butter, adding four pounds of fresh tomatoes cut in two and pressed. Moisten with two quarts of broth, and let cook for half an hour, then press the whole through a fine sieve; put this into a saucepan, adding one quart of thick soup stock (No. 195), boil, skim, and when ready to serve, taste the soup to see whether it be seasoned properly, if it should be too thick and some bouillon to it, and then pour it into a soup tureen with a garnishing of rice blanched and cooked in white consomme, also some small chicken forcemeat quenelles (No. 89) colored with spinach green.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A tomato purée soup from Ranhofer's Epicurean, built on two stocks and finished with two separate garnishes. The cross-references do most of the work, so the substitutions matter more than the technique.

The cross-referenced stockRanhofer's "thick soup stock (No. 195)" is a thickened stock, and a quart of light chicken velouté is a reasonable stand-in; without some thickened stock the soup is a thin tomato broth.
TomatoesFour pounds of fresh tomatoes, halved and pressed to release juice and seeds, reduce to roughly a quart of pulp. Two 28-oz cans of whole peeled tomatoes, drained of their thinnest liquid, are a fair stand-in and are better than pale winter fruit.
Sweat, do not brownSweat rather than brown -- the recipe says to fry the carrot, onion and celery in butter; keeping the heat moderate so they soften without colouring helps the finished soup stay red rather than brown-orange.
Straining"Press the whole through a fine sieve" was done with a wooden pestle and a tamis. A food mill on the fine plate, or a blender followed by a fine-mesh sieve, does it faster; skins and seeds must not go through or the texture turns grainy.
A garbled line"If it should be too thick and some bouillon to it" is a typesetting error for add some bouillon. Season at that point too: the recipe never calls for salt, on the assumption the broth and stock are already seasoned, which factory stock and canned broth may not be in the same way.
Spinach greenThe quenelles are tinted with vert d'épinards, a paste made by pounding raw spinach, squeezing out the juice and setting it over gentle heat until the green solids coagulate. A tablespoon of very fine raw spinach purée worked into the forcemeat achieves the same tint.
Rice garnishBlanch the rice a minute in boiling water to remove loose starch, then finish it in consommé so it does not cloud the soup. Cook it separately and add it to the tureen; rice left to sit in the soup keeps swelling and thickening it.
YieldRoughly three quarts before any thinning, enough for about ten to twelve as a first course. The quenelles and rice can be made ahead and warmed in a little consommé while the soup comes to the boil.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's kitchen, and its soup chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries distinguished from one another chiefly by garnish. Potage à la D'Osmont belongs to that family of nineteenth-century French soups named for a patron, a diplomat or a house — the d'Osmond were a French noble family with English connections, though the naming here is not documented. What the recipe really shows is the period's confidence in tomato as a purée base: fresh tomatoes cooked down with mirepoix, sieved, then given body not by cream or reduction but by a roux-thickened stock. The soup is paired with a garnish of white rice and green quenelles, in a kitchen where a soup was expected to arrive with something in it worth looking at.