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Cream of Green Wheat
Place in a saucepan one pound raw chicken bones, one pound shin of veal, one carrot cut in small pieces, a sliced onion, two leeks, two branches celery and one branch parsley. Moisten with three quarts water. Season with two teaspoons salt, and let slowly boil two hours. Mix in another saucepan two ounces butter with two ounces flour. Strain the broth through a strainer into this pan, mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, then add one pint green wheat or oatmeal, half pint milk, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well and let slowly cook forty-five minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile. Then add one gill cream, half ounce fresh butter, and mix well while heating for two minutes. Press it through sieve into a basin, then through strainer into a soup tureen, and serve with bread croutons separately.
A veal-and-chicken velouté thickened with green wheat, finished with cream and forced twice through a sieve. The double straining is not fussiness — it is what makes the soup a cream rather than a porridge.
- Green wheatAlmost certainly what is now sold as Grünkern or freekeh: wheat or spelt harvested while still green, then roasted, which gives it a smoky, grassy flavour. Sold today in Middle Eastern and German groceries, whole or cracked. The oatmeal alternative the recipe offers produces a different and much milder soup.
- Cooking time for the grainCracked freekeh softens in 20 to 25 minutes; whole grains want closer to an hour and will still be chewy at 45 minutes. Since everything is pushed through a sieve at the end, cook until the grain crushes easily against the side of the pan rather than watching the clock.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning works out to roughly half a teaspoon of cayenne and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg for three quarts of stock. A pint of dry grain is a generous two cups — reduce it to one and a half if you want a soup rather than a thick pottage.
- The roux and the strainCook the butter and flour together for a minute or two before the strained broth goes in, or the soup carries a raw-flour taste through to the end. Add the hot broth gradually and whisk; the original's wooden spoon works, but a whisk is more forgiving.
- ScorchingGrain in a floured liquid settles and catches. Use a heavy pan, keep the heat at a bare simmer, and stir the bottom often — "occasionally mixing" is optimistic for a 45-minute cook.
- Finishing with creamOnce the cream and last butter go in, heat only to steaming. Boiling after the enrichment will thin the texture and can break the soup.
- SievingPress through a fine sieve with a ladle or stiff spatula, then pass the result through a second, finer strainer as directed. A blender before the sieve saves considerable effort and gets you closer to the intended smoothness.
- YieldAbout two quarts after reduction and straining, serving six to eight as a first course. The croutons go in a separate dish so they stay crisp.
Green wheat soup belongs to the German and Alsatian tradition of Grünkern — grain taken while still soft and milky, then kiln-dried over wood fire, a practice generally traced to Franconia and the Odenwald, where an early harvest could be salvaged from weather that would ruin ripe grain. The roasting gives the grain its smoky flavour and, incidentally, makes it keep. The same idea produces freekeh across the eastern Mediterranean. The construction here — a simmer, then a double sieve and a cream finish — is straight classical kitchen method applied to a peasant grain.