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Cram of Jerusalem Artichokes
Peel and wash well in cold water twenty-four medium, sound Jerusalem artichokes; place them in a saucepan with half sliced carrot, half sliced onion, two well-cleaned sliced leeks, one sliced stalk celery, one chopped branch fresh parsley, one quart broth or water, one quart milk. Season with a teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Cover the pan and let slowly boil for thirty minutes. Have in a saucepan one ounce melted butter and two ounces flour. Stir well while heating for one minute. Strain the artichokes, etc., through a Chinese strainer into this saucepan and briskly whisk for two minutes; as soon as it comes to a boil add one gill cold cream and half ounce good butter; whisk briskly for two minutes, then strain the cream through a cheesecloth into a hot soup tureen and serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A classic white cream soup, thickened with roux and finished with cream and butter. The name in the original is a printer's slip for "Cream of Jerusalem Artichokes."
- What the vegetable isJerusalem artichokes are sunchokes, the knobbly tubers of Helianthus tuberosus, unrelated to globe artichokes. Twenty-four medium tubers is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb; buy firm ones with no soft spots or green shoots.
- Peeled tubers discolour fastCut surfaces brown within minutes, which will grey the finished soup. Hold the peeled tubers in cold water with a squeeze of lemon until they go into the pan.
- Old measuresA gill is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so the cayenne and nutmeg are each a scant quarter teaspoon. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons; two ounces of flour is a scant 1/2 cup.
- Chinese strainerThat is a chinois, the conical fine-mesh sieve. A fine sieve or a food mill works; press the softened vegetables through rather than discarding them, or the soup will be thin broth with no body.
- Milk needs a gentle heatA quart of milk in the pot means "slowly boil" should be read as a bare simmer. At a real boil the milk scorches on the bottom and the flavour carries through the whole tureen.
- The rouxCook the butter and flour just until it smells nutty and no longer raw, about a minute over moderate heat, without letting it colour. Add the strained purée off the heat and whisk it in before returning the pan to the burner, or it will lump.
- Finish off the boilOnce the cream and final butter go in, keep the soup below a simmer. Boiling after the enrichment splits the cream and dulls the flavour.
- The second strainingPassing the finished soup through cheesecloth is what gives it the velvety texture the recipe is after. It is optional if you sieved thoroughly the first time, but it does catch stray fibre.
- Yield and a caveatAbout two quarts, serving six to eight. Sunchokes are high in inulin, which many people digest poorly; serve modest portions if the soup is new to your table.
Jerusalem artichokes are a North American plant that reached European gardens in the first years of the seventeenth century and, by some accounts, spread in cultivation fairly quickly thereafter. The name is a puzzle of mistranslation: "artichoke" is generally traced to early comparisons of the tuber's flavour to an artichoke bottom, and "Jerusalem" is usually said to be a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, the family the plant belongs to. British kitchens compounded the joke by calling the same soup Palestine soup. Its appearance here reflects the classical French repertoire of the period, in which nearly any vegetable could be simmered with an aromatic base of carrot, onion, leek and celery, sieved, bound with roux, enriched with cream and sent out with croutons on a separate plate.