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Cream of Lentils, Major Domo
Soak a pint lentils in cold water four hours, drain on sieve and put in a saucepan with two and a half quarts water, one sliced carrot, a sliced onion, two sliced leeks, two sliced branches celery, one branch parsley, two ounces salt pork, one sliced, peeled, raw potato and the bones from a chicken or duck either cooked or raw. Season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover pan and slowly boil one and a half hours. Remove, rub it through a sieve into a basin, then strain through a Chinese strainer into another saucepan; place on fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil pour in two gills cream and half ounce butter, mix well while boiling two minutes. Pour the soup into a soup tureen and serve with bread croutons separately.
A classic purée-style lentil soup built on aromatics, salt pork and poultry bones. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the vessels and one of the measures need translating.
- Two gills of creamA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. Heavy cream is the right choice; the soup is boiled briefly after it goes in and lighter creams can break.
- The Chinese strainerA chinois — the tall conical fine-mesh strainer. It is the second pass, after the sieve, and it is what makes the difference between a rustic lentil soup and a smooth cream. A fine-mesh sieve or a blender followed by a sieve will do the same work.
- Pass it hot, twiceThe sieve step is the hinge. Push the solids through while everything is still hot — carrot, onion, leek, potato and lentil all go through, the pork and bones do not. Cooling makes the purée stiff and stubborn.
- Pull the bones firstFish out the chicken or duck bones and the salt pork before you sieve anything, or you will be picking splinters out of the mesh. The recipe accepts cooked or raw bones without preference; a couple of wings or a carcass is plenty.
- LentilsA pint is about 14 oz dry. Brown or green lentils are correct here. Red lentils collapse in twenty minutes and would make the 90-minute simmer pointless, though they need no soaking and sieve very easily if that is what you have.
- SoakingThe four-hour soak may reflect older, drier stock. Modern lentils do not require it; a rinse and a check for stones is enough, and the simmer time stands.
- Salt and seasoningThe teaspoon of salt is for a pot holding two and a half quarts of water plus salt pork, which contributes more. Season at the start as written, then correct at the end once the liquid has reduced and the cream is in.
- YieldSomething over two quarts once the ninety-minute boil has taken its toll, serving six to eight as a first course. The croutons are served separately so they stay crisp — fry small bread cubes in butter and pass them at the table.
"Major Domo" is the name of a garnish or treatment rather than a place — the maître d'hôtel or majordomo of a great house lent his title to more than one dish. What sits underneath the name is thoroughly standard French practice: a pulse cooked with a mirepoix and a piece of salt pork, enriched with poultry bones, passed twice and finished with cream. It is, in short, a purée de lentilles in the family of thick soups that took their body from the vegetable itself rather than from flour. Its presence in a book called The International Cook Book says a good deal about what "international" meant to an American publisher of the period — largely French, filtered through the professional hotel kitchen, with the chinois and the double straining assumed to be equipment a reader might reasonably own.