No. 317

Jerome Soup with Sweet Potato Quenelles

Potage a la Jerome aux Quenelles de Patates

Pour some game broth (No. 195), into a soup tureen; serve separately sweet potato quenelles as a garnishing, also some blanched tarragon leaves. Have croutons of bread one and a quarter inches in diameter, covered with butter and browned in the oven; serve them at the same time as the soup and garnishings.

Sweet Potato Quenelles.-Bake some sweet potatoes in the oven, remove their insides when they are done so as to obtain a half pound of potato; and add while mashing them one ounce of butter, one ounce of grated parmesan, one whole egg, one yolk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, also one tablespoonful of potato fecula. Make some flattened oval shaped quenelles, poach and serve when done with the soup.

← No. 316 Japanese or Nizam Pearls. Tapioca, Manioc, S Soups & Broths No. 318 Julienne Soup Faubonne and Mogul →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have game broth on hand (his No. 195) and treats this entry as an assembly job: clear broth in the tureen, quenelles and tarragon passed separately. The quenelles are the only real cooking here, and they are fragile.

The game brothNo. 195 is Ranhofer's game broth, called for here purely as a clear base; its composition belongs to that entry rather than this one. A well-made brown poultry or venison consommé stands in; the point is that it must be clear and strongly flavoured, since nothing else in the bowl carries seasoning.
Potato feculaPotato starch, sold today as potato starch or fécule de pomme de terre. It is not potato flour, which is dried cooked potato and behaves quite differently. Cornstarch is the closest substitute if you cannot find it.
Bake, do not boil, the potatoesThe half pound is the weight of the cooked flesh after scooping, not of whole potatoes — start with about a pound. Baking dries the flesh; boiled sweet potato carries too much water and the quenelles will slump in the poaching liquid.
Poaching is the hingePoach in barely trembling salted water or light broth, around 170–180°F, never a rolling boil, which tears them apart. They need only three or four minutes and are done when they float and feel set. Test one before committing the batch; if it disintegrates, work another spoonful of starch into the mixture.
Oven for the croutonsThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350°F, for eight to ten minutes until evenly golden works. Cut the rounds at 1¼ inches with a cutter or a small glass and butter them as directed.
Blanched tarragonWhole leaves dropped in boiling water for ten seconds and refreshed in ice water, which fixes the colour and softens tarragon's anise edge. Add them at the table, as Ranhofer directs; held in hot broth they lose their colour.
YieldThe quenelle mixture will make something on the order of 20 small ovals; the entry gives no number of servings.

A Little History

This is one of hundreds of garnished consommés in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. In the classical French system a clear soup was named for its garnish or its dedicatee, but the source of the name à la Jérôme is not recorded, and Ranhofer, as usual, offers no explanation. What the recipe really shows is how a Gilded Age kitchen worked by cross-reference: the labour lives in No. 195, the clarified game broth, and the entry itself is little more than instructions for dressing it. Sweet potato was a distinctly American touch in an otherwise Parisian framework, and the quenelle — normally a forcemeat dumpling of veal, fish or poultry — here becomes a vegetable one, bound with cheese, egg and potato starch rather than pounded meat.