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Calves' Tails, Berlin Style
Clip off a little at both ends of three fresh calves' tails, then cut them into half-inch pieces, place in a saucepan with a carrot cut in quarters, one turnip cut same way, one onion with two cloves stuck in and one small stalk celery. Tie together two leeks, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, a sprig thyme, a sprig marjoram and two bay leaves, and add to the soup. Moisten with three quarts water. Season with two teaspoons salt and half a teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan, and let slowly boil one and a half hours. Place one ounce butter and two ounces flour in a saucepan, briskly stir on the fire while heating two minutes. Skim the fat from the surface of the broth, then strain it through a cheesecloth into this pan, add a gill Rhine wine and mix well until it comes to a boil. Add the calves' tails with half a teaspoon chopped parsley, boil ten minutes. Pour into a soup tureen and serve.
A clear-broth soup thickened at the end with a butter-flour roux, closer to a German Ochsenschwanzsuppe in miniature. The work is in the long gentle simmer and in getting the roux smooth before the broth goes in.
- Calves' tailsNot a supermarket item; order from a halal or Latin butcher, or substitute oxtail. Oxtail is fattier and tougher and wants three hours of simmering rather than one and a half, so cook it separately to tenderness before it joins the finished soup.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Rhine wine means a white from the Rhine, typically Riesling and often off-dry; a dry, unoaked white works the same way.
- "Slowly boil"A bare simmer, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil clouds the broth and pulls the vegetables to shreds, and the broth wants to be clean before the roux goes to work on it.
- The bouquetTwo leeks, parsley, chervil, thyme, marjoram and bay tied with string is a standard bouquet garni. Chervil is seasonal and fragile; if you cannot find it, leave it out rather than substituting more parsley.
- The rouxOne ounce butter to two ounces flour is a fairly dry, tight roux, about 2 tbsp butter to a scant 1/2 cup flour. Two minutes over the fire cooks out the raw taste without colouring it. Pour the hot strained broth in gradually and whisk hard, or it will lump.
- Order of operationsSkim the fat before straining, not after; once the roux takes it up, the soup tastes greasy and no amount of skimming will fix it. Strain through a double layer of cheesecloth.
- Final ten minutesThat last boil is what cooks the flour through. Keep it at a low bubble and stir the bottom, since a floured soup scorches easily.
- YieldThree quarts of water, reduced somewhat, gives roughly six to eight servings as a first course. Taste before serving: the reduction concentrates the original two teaspoons of salt.
Tail soups belong to a long tradition of turning cheap, collagen-rich cuts into something formal: long simmering breaks down the tail's connective tissue, and the resulting broth sets to jelly when cold. Oxtail soup was the more famous version, often said to have been popularised in eighteenth-century London, though that story is hard to document. Calves' tails are smaller, milder and quicker to cook. The Rhine wine and the flour-thickened finish suggest bourgeois rather than peasant cooking, and a dish titled for a particular city is characteristic of cookbooks that organised their contents by national style.