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Consomme, Fermiere
Prepare a consomme, strain in another saucepan and keep simmering till required. Cut two medium carrots, one white turnip and a quarter very small, well-pared cabbage in strips one inch long and a half inch thick. Lay these vegetables on a plate, sprinkle over a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon sugar, toss vegetables for eight minutes to make them sweat, place in a saucepan with half ounce butter and one gill consomme, cover pan and set in oven for one hour. Remove, add entire contents of pan to consomme with three tablespoons cooked green peas and let boil for five minutes. Place six thin slices toasted French bread in a soup tureen with a teaspoon chopped chives, pour consomme over and serve.
A clear soup built on a good consommé, in one piece by the vegetables, which are drawn and glazed separately so the broth stays bright. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes you already have consommé on hand and gives no yield.
- The hinge: keep the consommé clearThe hinge: keep the consomme clear -- The vegetables are sweated and braised in a separate pan, which helps keep starch and scum out of the broth. The recipe itself calls for five minutes at a boil once they are added; beyond that, hold the soup at a bare simmer, since hard boiling will dull a clarified consomme.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- "Set in oven"No temperature is given, and the book supplies none. A covered pan of vegetables in half a cup of liquid would suit a moderate oven, in the region of 325-350F, if the liquid is to reduce to a glaze rather than boil away.
- One hour is long for this cutIn a moderate oven, strips an inch by half an inch will likely be tender well before the hour is out, and the cabbage may collapse if pushed the full time. Check at the half hour and pull the pan when the vegetables hold their shape but yield to a knife.
- The sweating stepSalt and sugar on a plate for eight minutes draws out surface moisture and begins to season the strips. Drain off nothing, and remember the salt is already in the dish before you season the finished soup.
- PeasThree tablespoons of cooked green peas, i.e. peas already boiled (or, in the period, tinned). Frozen peas need no precooking; add them straight in for the final five minutes.
- The breadThin rounds of a baguette or similar lean white loaf, toasted dry. Put them in the tureen and pour the hot soup over at the table, or they go to pulp.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of consomme. The six slices of bread imply six servings.
Fermière means "farmwife's," and in the classical French repertoire it marks a garnish of ordinary root and cabbage vegetables — the produce of a farm kitchen garden rather than a market. The name belongs to a large family of consommé garnishes catalogued in nineteenth-century French practice, where a single well-made clear broth was dressed many different ways and named for each: brunoise, julienne, printanière, paysanne. That taxonomy is why a book called The International Cook Book devotes so many short entries to what is essentially the same soup; a professional cook of the period was expected to know the garnish from its name alone. The technique of salting and sugaring the vegetables to make them "sweat," then glazing them in butter and a little of the broth, is the standard method for keeping a clear soup clear.