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Consomme, Croute Au Pot
Prepare and strain into another saucepan a consomme. Cut into very small square strips two each small red carrots and white turnips. Cut a quarter of a small cabbage into one-inch strips. Finely slice one leek and two small white onions. Place these articles in a small saucepan, with half ounce butter, half a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar, two saltspoons white pepper and two gills of the consomme; mix well, boil for five minutes, then set in the oven for one hour. Remove, add all the contents of the pan to the consomme, add the leaves of two branches chervil, and boil for five minutes. Pour in an earthen soup tureen, adding six slices of toasted French bread to the soup and serve.
A classic clear soup that assumes you already have consommé on hand; the recipe is really a method for the garnish. Everything hinges on keeping the broth clear, so the vegetables are stewed apart and added at the last moment.
- Quantities of consomméThe original never says how much. Figure about 2 quarts (2 litres) of strong, well-skimmed consommé for six servings, of which 1 cup is drawn off for the vegetables.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is 1 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making two saltspoons half a teaspoon of white pepper — a good deal; a quarter teaspoon suits most palates.
- The oven hourNo temperature is given. A covered pan in a moderate oven, somewhere around 300-325°F, should keep the vegetables at little more than a simmer and soften them without colouring them; the point is gentle, even cooking, not browning.
- The cut"Very small square strips" suggests a short julienne of carrot and turnip, so that each spoonful carries a little of everything; the recipe fixes the cabbage itself at one-inch strips, which collapse as they cook.
- Keeping it clearSkim the butter and any fat off the vegetable pan before combining, and never let the assembled soup boil hard. A rolling boil clouds a consommé that was strained clear.
- ChervilTwo branches means two sprigs, leaves only, added off the heat or barely simmered — its faint aniseed note vanishes with long cooking. Flat parsley with a pinch of tarragon is the usual stand-in.
- The breadSlice a baguette thin and dry the slices out in the oven until crisp rather than merely tanned. Soft toast dissolves into the broth; the crusts are meant to soften slowly at the table.
- ServingSix slices of bread indicates six servings. A warmed earthenware tureen is not decorative fussiness — it keeps a thin soup hot long enough to reach the last bowl.
Croûte au pot is the crust from the pot: the French farmhouse habit of pouring the broth of a pot-au-feu over dried bread and eating it as a first course, before the boiled meat and vegetables came to the table. By the time it entered the professional repertoire it had been refined out of recognition — the cloudy household broth replaced by clarified consommé, the odds and ends of root vegetables replaced by a neat julienne of carrot, turnip, cabbage, leek and onion stewed separately in butter so the clarity survives. Escoffier and his contemporaries codified dozens of such garnished consommés, each distinguished only by what floated in it, and a cook was expected to know them by name. Its survival on formal menus reflects how thoroughly French nomenclature governed them: the dish is peasant in origin and appears as a mark of refinement.