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Cream of French Artichokes
Drop two large French artichokes in boiling water for twenty minutes, thoroughly drain, then detach all leaves from the bottoms, remove stems from hearts, cut bottoms in small squares, and keep them on a plate. Heat one ounce butter in a saucepan, add "leaves," cover pan and cook fifteen minutes; then add two and a half ounces flour, mix with wooden spoon two minutes, moisten with two and a half quarts white broth, add one white onion with two cloves stuck in it, one teaspoon salt, one teaspoon sugar, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Cover pan and slowly boil one hour. Remove, pass soup through a sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into another saucepan, add one pint milk, the artichoke bottoms, lightly mix and boil twenty-five minutes. Dilute one egg yolk with a half gill cream and juice of a quarter lemon, add to soup, sharply mix with wooden spoon for two minutes, pour cream into a soup tureen and serve.
A classic cream soup built on a roux and white stock, with the artichoke leaves used for flavor and strained out, and the tender bottoms kept whole in the finished soup. Two things decide whether it works: removing the fuzzy choke, and holding the egg-yolk liaison below a boil.
- The liaison must not boilOnce the yolk, cream and lemon juice go in, the soup is finished — keep it below a simmer and stir for the two minutes indicated, off the heat or on very low. Any real boil scrambles the yolk into threads, and the lemon juice makes curdling more likely.
- "French artichokes"These are globe artichokes, distinguished in American books of the period from Jerusalem artichokes, which are unrelated tubers. "Two large" simply means two of the biggest available; the recipe gives no weight.
- Trimming the bottomsThe recipe says to remove the stems but never mentions the choke. Scrape out the hairy center from each bottom before dicing, or the soup will be full of fibers. Hold the diced bottoms in water with a squeeze of lemon; they brown quickly.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup, so a half gill of cream is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. One ounce butter is 2 tablespoons; 2 1/2 ounces flour is a scant 2/3 cup by volume.
- CayenneTwo saltspoons is about a half teaspoon of cayenne in a soup meant to taste delicately of artichoke. Start with a quarter of that and adjust at the end.
- White brothWhite stock — unbrowned veal or chicken bones simmered with aromatics, no roasted color. A light, unsalted chicken stock is the practical substitute. Because the recipe already adds a full teaspoon of salt, use unsalted or low-sodium stock and correct at the end.
- The double strainSieving and then straining through cheesecloth gives a cleaner texture than a sieve alone, which lets fine solids through. Press the leaves against the sieve to extract the flavour, then strain the liquid clean.
- Yield and timingTwo and a half quarts of stock plus a pint of milk gives roughly 3 quarts before reduction — eight to ten servings. The stated hour of slow boiling, then twenty-five minutes more, will reduce and thicken it considerably; if it tightens too far, loosen with a little more stock before adding the liaison.
The globe artichoke reached French and then Anglo-American kitchens from Italy — its introduction to France is traditionally credited to Catherine de' Medici's household in the sixteenth century, though the plant was already known in the Mediterranean long before. In American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was sometimes called the "French artichoke" to keep it distinct from the Jerusalem artichoke, a cheaper tuber then common in kitchen gardens. The soup itself follows the standard grand-cuisine template for a cream soup of the period: roux, white stock, a long slow simmer, a double straining, milk, and a final liaison of egg yolk and cream finished with lemon — the same skeleton used for cream of asparagus, celery or lettuce, with the vegetable swapped.