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Cream of Cucumbers, Reine
Peel four medium, sound, rather green cucumbers, cut into quarters, remove all the seeds and slice.
Have in a saucepan three-quarters of an ounce butter and add the cucumbers. Season with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one saltspoon ground nutmeg; mix the cucumbers well in the seasoning. Cover the pan and let gently smother on the range for ten minutes. Then moisten with two and a half quarts hot broth or hot water and let slowly boil for forty-five minutes. Heat in another saucepan one tablespoon butter, add two ounces flour, briskly stir for one minute, pour the cucumber broth into this pan, adding one and a half gills cream; briskly whisk for two minutes and as soon as it comes to a boil, gradually add half ounce butter, continually mixing until it is melted. Strain the cream through a sieve, then through a cheesecloth into a hot soup tureen and serve with bread croutons separately.
A classic cream soup built on sweated cucumber and a butter roux, thinned with broth and finished with cream. Nothing here is difficult, but the old measures and the sheer volume of liquid need translating.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning is 1/2 teaspoon cayenne and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg. A gill is half a cup, making the cream 3/4 cup.
- Weights into cupsThree-quarters of an ounce of butter is about 1 1/2 tablespoons; the half ounce at the finish is about a tablespoon. Two ounces of flour is a scant 1/2 cup.
- The cayenne is assertiveHalf a teaspoon of cayenne in a white cream soup reads as heat, not background. Start with a quarter teaspoon and correct at the end, when the cream has dulled it.
- Smother means sweat"Let gently smother on the range" is a covered sweat over low heat with no colour. If the cucumber browns the finished soup turns grey-green and tastes cooked rather than fresh.
- Scale the liquidTwo and a half quarts of broth for four cucumbers is a large, deliberately thin soup. Halving everything works cleanly; the flour and butter halve with it.
- Forty-five minutes is for reductionForty-five minutes is a long boil -- Cucumber is soft in fifteen, and the recipe does not say why it wants forty-five. Keep it at a bare simmer and expect real loss of volume; if you want more cucumber character, simmer 25 minutes and reduce the broth separately.
- Order of the finishThe hot cucumber broth goes into the roux, not the reverse, and it must be whisked hard for the two minutes specified or the flour will set in lumps. The recipe adds the last half ounce of butter as soon as the soup comes to the boil, mixing continually until it melts; easing off a hard boil first helps it stay smooth.
- The double strainingSieve first to break down and push through the pulp, then pass through damp cheesecloth for a smooth texture. A blender before the sieve saves effort and does no harm.
- Croutons separatelyBread cubes, sent to the table in their own dish as the recipe directs.
The International Cook Book came from Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its cream soups follow the French service kitchen of the late nineteenth century almost to the letter: a vegetable sweated in butter, a white roux, broth, cream, and a final enrichment of butter whisked in at the end. The tag Reine means simply "queen" and in this period was attached to refined, pale, cream-finished soups, most familiarly potage à la reine; the association with French court cookery is traditional rather than documented, and no particular royal recipe lies behind it.