No. 310

Garbure with Lettuce

Garbure aux Laitues

First wash sixteen small lettuce heads several times, changing the water each time; blanch them for ten minutes, then refresh and press out all the liquid from them; lay them on a cloth, season them with a little salt and pepper, and place on each a chicken forcemeat ball of an inch and a quarter in diameter, mixing in with it a little chopped chervil. Wrap up the forcemeat in the lettuce, them over, giving them a long appearance; then tie three times round with a fine string (lettuce for soup must not be wrapped in lard), and put them in a stewpan lined with carrots, onions, and a garnished bouquet. Cover with some veal stock, protect with a sheet of buttered paper, boil, and let the lettuce simmer for two hours, then drain, untie, and trim them slightly; put them into a vegetable dish, moistening them with consomme, and keep them in a warm place until needed. Trim off some small rye rolls, the same as for croute-au-pot (No. 305); range them in a deep dish, baste them over with chicken fat, and brown them in the oven; drain off the fat, and when colored, moisten them with good broth, season with a little mignonette, and send to the table at the same time a soup tureen of consomme. Serve grated parmesan cheese separately. Put into each plate one of the crusts, also one lettuce and cover with consomme.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's soup in two parts: stuffed lettuce packets braised in stock, and rye crusts browned in poultry fat, assembled at table under clear consommé. The work is all in the wrapping and the stock.

The hinge: blanch, then squeeze hardThe lettuce must be blanched and pressed genuinely dry before stuffing, or the packets weep water into the braise and refuse to hold their cigar shape. Roll each one tight and tie in three places with plain cotton twine.
Sixteen small headsRanhofer likely has in mind young cabbage or butterhead lettuce of a few ounces each rather than modern romaine or iceberg; small Little Gem heads are the closest thing on sale now. The recipe puts one lettuce and one crust on each plate, so sixteen heads make sixteen servings.
Chicken forcemeatRanhofer does not specify which of his chicken forcemeats is meant; a quenelle forcemeat, with the chopped chervil folded in, is the obvious reading. An inch and a quarter is about 3 cm, roughly a rounded tablespoon rolled into a ball.
Two hours is for 1894 lettuceTwo hours suits the lettuce Ranhofer had -- modern hothouse lettuce may collapse well before then. Simmer gently until the forcemeat is set and reads 165F at the centre, which is likely to be well short of two hours; the buttered paper also keeps the tops from drying.
"Must not be wrapped in lard"Ranhofer is warning against barding the packets in sheets of pork fat, as one would for a braised garnish. Fat would cloud the consommé, which has to arrive at table clear.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked white or black pepper, not a sauce. Grind it fresh and coarse over the moistened crusts.
The crustsSmall rye rolls trimmed as for croute-au-pot, basted with chicken fat and browned in a hot oven; Ranhofer gives no temperature or time. Drain the fat off before moistening with broth or they will taste greasy under the consomme.
Stock and consomméThe braising liquid is veal stock; the finishing liquid is a clarified chicken or beef consommé. Strain the braise and use it to fortify the consommé rather than discarding it, and keep the packets in warm consommé, not water, while the crusts colour.

A Little History

Garbure in its home country is a plain thing: the thick Gascon and Béarnais pot of cabbage, beans, preserved goose or pork and stale bread, its name generally traced to a word for a mixture or a mash, and the bread soaked in broth is what makes it garbure rather than soup. What Charles Ranhofer sets down here in The Epicurean (1894), from three decades of cooking at Delmonico's in New York, is the dish after the grande cuisine of the nineteenth century has taken it apart: the peasant cabbage becomes sixteen individually stuffed and tied heads of lettuce, the stale bread becomes trimmed rye crusts gilded in chicken fat, and the pot liquor becomes a clarified consommé poured at the table. The lettuce is not a substitution so much as a season: braised lettuce belonged to spring menus, when the heads were small and sweet, and a French-trained chef in America had a full brigade to spare for tying sixteen parcels of string.