No. 325

Montelle Soup

Potage a la Monteille

Serve a chicken consomme (No. 190), garnished with stuffed lettuces (No. 2752), and cucumbers prepared as follows: Cut off the ends of the cucumbers, peel them nicely, and divide them lengthwise into inch pieces; remove the seeds, pare them to resemble cloves of garlic, then fry them in butter in a saucepan, season, and finish cooking them in a little white broth, in such a way that they are thoroughly done when the liquid is entirely reduced. Serve separately the lettuce and cucumbers in a vegetable dish, and at the same time a tureen of chicken consomme.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A garnish recipe more than a soup: Ranhofer assumes you already have chicken consommé and braised stuffed lettuce on hand, and asks only that you turn and glaze cucumbers to go with them. The work is in the knife and the reduction.

The cross-referencesNo. 190 is Ranhofer's chicken consomme, a clarified chicken stock; No. 2752 is his stuffed lettuce, most likely braised heads filled with forcemeat, though this recipe says only "stuffed lettuces." Any well-clarified chicken consomme and a stuffed braised lettuce will stand in. Without clarification the dish loses its point, since the whole effect is clear broth against pale green garnish.
"Pare them to resemble cloves of garlic"Close to what a modern kitchen calls turning: cutting each seeded cucumber section into a smooth, tapered piece about an inch long, curved like a garlic clove rather than strictly faceted. A small paring knife or bird's beak knife, and expect some waste.
White brothRanhofer's bouillon blanc is an unclarified, unbrowned light stock, chicken or veal. Unsalted low-sodium chicken stock is the practical substitute, since the liquid reduces to nothing and any salt in it concentrates.
The hinge: reduce to dryThe instruction that matters is that the cucumbers be exactly done at the moment the liquid disappears, glazed and glossy, not stewed in a puddle and not scorched. Use a wide pan, barely cover with broth, and cook uncovered at a bare simmer. If they soften before the liquid goes, lift them out and reduce the broth separately, then return them to coat.
CucumbersField cucumbers of Ranhofer's day were probably seedier and thicker-skinned than much of what markets sell now. English or Persian cucumbers need little seeding and turn more easily; peel them anyway, as the recipe directs.
Season lightly"Season" here means salt and pepper at the frying stage. Keep it restrained: the consomme carries its own salt, and the glaze concentrates whatever you add.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a compendium of the French repertoire as it was practised in New York, and its soup chapter runs to hundreds of numbered variations distinguished chiefly by garnish. Names like Meissonier, Montorgueil and Monteille were applied to consommés in the nineteenth-century French manner — after painters, streets, patrons, sometimes for no recorded reason at all — and the naming was largely a matter of catalogue rather than tradition; Ranhofer himself spells it "Monteille" in the French heading. What the recipe really preserves is a style of service: the clear soup poured at table, the garnish passed separately so it stays intact and hot, an approach that belongs to the service à la russe that had displaced the older French practice of setting everything out at once.