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Consomme, Argenteuil
Prepare, strain into another saucepan and keep hot a plain consomme. Cut tender part only of a bunch fresh asparagus in half-inch-long pieces, thoroughly wash in plenty cold water, drain, place in a saucepan with a quart water, half teaspoon each salt and sugar, then boil for twenty minutes. Remove, drain on a sieve, drop tips into the consomme, add teaspoon sugar, boil for ten minutes, pour consomme into a soup tureen and serve very hot.
A garnish soup rather than a recipe in its own right: everything depends on a clear consommé you have already made and on not cooking the asparagus to threads.
- The asparagus timing is the hingeTwenty minutes in salted water followed by ten more in the consommé will reduce tips to grey pulp. Modern practice is 2-4 minutes in boiling salted water, depending on thickness, then a refresh in ice water to hold the colour, and no more than a minute in the hot consommé before serving.
- Why the tips were boiled separatelyCooking the asparagus in the consommé itself would cloud a clear soup; the salted, lightly sugared water presumably seasons the tips beforehand. Keep the separate cooking step even with the shortened time; do not simmer the vegetable in the consommé itself.
- The sugarHalf a teaspoon in the blanching water does little harm. The extra teaspoon added to the consommé is worth omitting or halving unless you want a noticeably sweet broth.
- "A plain consomme"The book means a clarified beef or veal stock raised with lean minced meat and egg white, strained through cloth. A good commercial beef consommé or a well-clarified homemade stock will serve; it should be brilliant enough to read print through.
- "Tender part only"Snap or cut the spears where they break cleanly and use the top two or three inches. The butts can go into the stock for the consommé rather than the bin.
- Yield and servingThe recipe does not say how much consommé to make; the quart of water is for blanching the asparagus. One bunch of tips will garnish a first-course quantity of soup. It is served in the tureen and ladled at table; warm the tureen and the cups, since a clear soup this thin loses heat fast.
Argenteuil, a town northwest of Paris on the Seine, was the great asparagus district of nineteenth-century France, and in classical French menu language the name attached to a garnish simply signals asparagus — Argenteuil soup, Argenteuil eggs, Argenteuil garnish. Filippini's book takes over that shorthand from the classical French repertoire, which is why a soup made of nothing but clear broth and asparagus tips gets a place name rather than a description. The recipe also shows an older, longer approach to green vegetables, asparagus cooked until fully soft; the crisp-tender vegetable is a later fashion.