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Cream of Cucumbers, Princesse
Peel four medium, sound cucumbers, cut in quarters and remove seeds, then cut in small pieces and plunge in a quart boiling water six minutes. Thoroughly drain on a sieve, place in a saucepan with an ounce butter and cook on fire for fifteen minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile. Pour in two quarts white broth, a quart water, and add one onion with two cloves stuck in it. Tie in a bunch two branches parsley, one of chervil, a leek, bay leaf, two branches celery and add to soup, season with a good teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly mix and let boil for an hour and a half. Mix in a bowl three ounces rice flour with a gill milk, half gill cream, add to pan with one saltspoon each cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg, and mix well with a whisk while heating for five minutes. Strain cream through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan, add a royale garnishing and half pint of cooked green peas, let just come to a boil, then pour into soup tureen and serve.
A classical French cream soup written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen, where a cook was assumed to know what a royale was and how to make one. Two things need decoding before you start: the royale garnish and the rice-flour liaison.
- Royale garnishingA royale is a savory custard baked in a shallow buttered mold set in a water bath in a low oven until just set, chilled, turned out and cut into small dice or fancy shapes. Proportions vary; something on the order of one egg plus one yolk to a half cup of broth or cream, strained and skimmed of foam so it sets smooth, works. It is added at the last moment and never boiled hard, or it breaks up in the tureen.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so the liaison is 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- White brothBouillon blanc: a pale, unroasted veal or chicken stock, lightly seasoned and not reduced to glaze. Any good unsalted light chicken stock stands in. With two quarts of stock plus a quart of water, taste before adding the full teaspoon of salt.
- Rice flourNot rice starch or cornstarch, gives this soup its characteristically light body and clean flavor and is still sold in Asian groceries and baking aisles. Slake it thoroughly in the cold milk and cream before it goes near the hot pan, and whisk continuously while it heats or you will get lumps that the strainer only partly saves you from.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. A fine sieve works; press the solids through with a ladle so the cucumber pulp enriches the soup rather than being discarded.
- The hour and a halfThat was normal for a period cream soup, where long cooking softened everything for the strainer. Cucumber flavor is delicate and fades badly over that time; 35 to 45 minutes gets the vegetables fully tender and keeps far more of the cucumber. If you do go the full time, expect a mild, broth-forward soup.
- Blanching the cucumbersThe six-minute plunge in boiling water and thorough draining removes bitterness and excess water. Do not skip it and do not let them sit in the water longer, or the fifteen minutes in butter will simply stew them.
- Bouquet garniTie the parsley, chervil, leek, bay and celery with kitchen string so it can be lifted out whole before straining. Chervil is seasonal and hard to find; a little tarragon plus extra parsley approximates its anise note.
- YieldAbout three quarts finished, serving eight to ten as a first course. The peas and royale go in only long enough to heat through.
Princesse is not a flourish but a term of art: in the classical French menu vocabulary of the later nineteenth century, a dish so named generally carries a garnish built around asparagus tips, sometimes with green peas and a royale, and the label told a trained cook what would arrive in the bowl -- though this version calls for peas and a royale with no asparagus. Alexander Filippini, longtime chef at Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book in that idiom, and its soup chapter reads like a service manual for a kitchen where a dozen creams and purees might be held ready at once. Cucumber as a hot soup vegetable surprises modern readers, but it appears regularly in the period repertoire, blanched to draw out bitterness and then bound with rice flour, which was commonly used instead of roux for pale soups because it thickens without clouding or dulling the color. The royale itself is older than the name Princesse: a savory custard cut into shapes, it belongs to the tradition of garnished consommes described in nineteenth-century French cookery.