No. 326

Montorgueil Soup

Potage a la Montorgueil

Keep boiling on the side of the fire, one and a half quarts of thickened chicken soup stock (No. 195), despumating it for forty minutes. Prepare a garnishing of tender vegetables, composed of green peas, string beans, green or white asparagus tops, small Brussels sprouts, small new carrots whole or cut up, some of the tender leaves picked from a cabbage, and some well minced lettuce and sorrel leaves. These vegetables must be blanched separately according to their nature, only the sorrel leaves remaining raw. One hour before serving, skim off the fat from the soup, strain the broth, and return it to the saucepan; boil the liquid on the side of the range, add the vegetables according to their tenderness, the hardest ones first, and finally the cut up leaves. Now put into an earthern bowl, five or six egg-yolks, dilute them with a little cream, add some grated nutmeg and a few small pats of butter; thicken the soup with this, and finish with a small piece more butter, mixed with some spinach green. Pour it into a soup tureen and serve.

← No. 325 Montelle Soup Soups & Broths No. 327 Mullagatawny Soup, Indian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A spring vegetable soup finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. Everything hinges on the last two minutes: once the yolks go in, the soup must never boil again or it will curdle into a grainy mess.

The liaisonTemper the yolk-cream mixture with a ladle of hot soup before adding it back, then hold the pot off direct heat. Keep it below about 180F; the moment you see a simmer break the surface the yolks have scrambled.
"Despumating"From the Latin for removing foam: skim the scum and fat that rise as the stock holds at a bare simmer, repeatedly, over the forty minutes. "On the side of the fire" means the cooler edge of a coal range, i.e. a low burner holding the liquid just under a boil.
Thickened chicken stockThe recipe cross-references Ranhofer's No. 195; what matters here is that the stock arrives already thickened rather than as a plain broth. A good chicken stock lightly thickened with a blond roux, or reduced until it coats a spoon, stands in; canned broth alone will taste thin under the cream and yolks.
Spinach greenA period colouring made by pounding raw spinach, straining the juice, and heating it until the green solids coagulate, then working them into butter. It is for colour only. Blanched spinach puréed and pushed through a sieve, beaten into softened butter, gives the same effect.
Blanch separately, add in orderThe instruction is not fussiness: peas, asparagus tips and Brussels sprouts have wildly different cooking times. Blanch each to just-tender and refresh in ice water, then reheat in the finished broth so nothing goes olive-drab.
Sorrel stays rawShredded sorrel goes in at the very end and wilts in the residual heat. Cooked long it collapses to a brown purée and its acid can help curdle the cream. Its job here is a sharp green note against the rich liaison.
Butter and nutmeg"A few small pats" and "a small piece more" are unmeasured; something on the order of 2 to 3 tablespoons in total is a reasonable reading. Grate the nutmeg fresh and use it lightly; pre-ground nutmeg reads as dusty in a delicate soup.
YieldA quart and a half of stock plus garnish serves six as a first course. Ranhofer's soups were plated small within a long menu, so treat this as a course rather than a meal.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter runs to hundreds of numbered potages, each cross-referenced to a foundation stock elsewhere in the book. The name is often said to derive from the Rue Montorgueil in Paris, a street near the old market halls and a byword in the nineteenth century for produce and provisioning, though the derivation is folk attribution rather than established fact; it suits a soup built entirely on a parade of young vegetables. The technique is older than either: binding a broth with egg yolks and cream is the classic French liaison, a survival of medieval and early modern thickening practice that persisted in high-end cookery long after roux took over elsewhere.