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Cream of Chicory
Remove the stale leaves, if any, then detach the leaves from the roots of three heads of sound, fresh chicory; wash in cold water, drain on a sieve and scald them in boiling water five minutes; drain on a sieve, place in a large saucepan with an ounce of butter and cook on the range ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two quarts of broth, add an onion with two cloves stuck in it. Tie together one branch chervil, two branches parsley, one bay leaf, and add to the soup. Season with teaspoon salt and one tablespoon sugar, then boil one hour. Add half pint hot milk, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Place in a bowl two ounces rice flour, two gills cream and the juice of quarter of a lemon. Sharply mix until well thickened and add to the soup. Mix with a wooden spoon while boiling five minutes, add half ounce butter, mix well. Press the cream through a sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into a soup tureen, then serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A classic French-style cream soup — vegetable sweated in butter, simmered in broth, thickened with rice flour and cream, then sieved smooth. Most of the work is in the straining, and the only real pitfall is lumping the rice flour.
- Which chicory"Three heads" and "detach the leaves from the roots" may point to the pale forced chicons sold today as Belgian endive or witloof, though the wording would equally suit a leafy garden chicory rather than the blue-flowered roadside plant. Trimmed weight depends on which is meant.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is 1 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon: the cayenne comes to 1/2 teaspoon and the nutmeg to 1/4. Two ounces of rice flour is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup by volume.
- The hinge: the thickeningRice flour must be slaked cold. Whisk it into the cream and lemon juice until perfectly smooth before it goes near the pot, and add it in a thin stream while stirring. Dumped in dry it seizes into pellets that no sieve will forgive.
- "Cook on the range"This means a gentle sweat over medium-low heat, not browning; the recipe does not specify covering the pan. Ten minutes in butter should leave the leaves limp and glossy with no color.
- The blanching and the sugarThe five-minute scald and the tablespoon of sugar both work to temper chicory's bitterness. Both help if you want the soup sweet rather than sharp.
- Shorten the simmerThe hour may reflect the need to soften everything enough to force through cloth by hand. Twenty to thirty minutes will get the leaves fully tender and the flavor stays fresher; a blender can then do much of the work of the sieve.
- StrainingSieve first, then pass through damp cheesecloth for the fine, silky texture the period expected. If you have blended the soup, one pass through a fine chinois is enough.
- Finish off the boilOnce the half ounce of butter goes in, keep the soup below a simmer. Hard boiling after the cream and butter will split the finish.
- YieldTwo quarts of broth plus milk and cream, less whatever the hour's boil drives off, gives something in the region of two quarts -- roughly eight servings as a first course. Croutons are served alongside, not floated, so they stay crisp.
Chicory, Cichorium intybus, has been eaten in Europe since antiquity, but the tight blanched heads called for here are a comparatively modern crop: forcing the roots in darkness to produce pale, mild chicons is generally traced to Belgian growers around the middle of the nineteenth century, and witloof is said to have reached Paris markets soon after as a luxury winter vegetable. Whatever its origin, the soup is handled in the standard French manner for any crème: blanch, sweat in butter, simmer with an onion clouté and a bouquet, bind with a starch-and-cream liaison, then force through cloth until it is smooth. Rice flour rather than a roux was a common professional choice of the period, giving body without the taste of cooked wheat.