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Garbure, Claremont
Cut two small Bermuda onions in thin rings and place in a saucepan with one-half ounce butter and gently fry fifteen minutes, frequently stirring meanwhile, then add ounce flour, stir well, moisten with two quarts broth, one quart water, and lightly mix. Tie in a bunch two leeks, two branches celery, two branches parsley and one branch chervil; add to soup and add also one pound raw shin of beef and a beef marrowbone. Season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover pan and gently simmer one and a half hours. Cut from a loaf of stale French bread six slices a quarter-inch thick, place on a tin. Skim fat from surface of soup and pour over bread. Set in oven six minutes. Remove the tin, take up beef, bone and bouquet from soup, then pour it into a soup tureen, add bread. Sprinkle a half teaspoon chopped chives over and serve with a little grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese separately.
A clear beef soup finished in the French style, with the broth poured over oven-crisped bread. The one thing to get right is the onions: fifteen minutes of gentle frying should leave them soft and pale gold, not browned, or the finished soup turns muddy and slightly bitter.
- Quantities in weightHalf an ounce of butter is one tablespoon; one ounce of flour is a scant quarter cup. Together they make a very light roux, enough to give the broth body without turning it into a thickened soup.
- Liquid and yieldTwo quarts broth plus one quart water is three quarts of liquid, which will reduce somewhat over the simmer. Six slices of bread tells you the intended service: six portions.
- Seasoning is lowA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper for three quarts assumes a broth that is already seasoned. Taste at the end of the simmer and correct, particularly after the reduction.
- Shin of beefA pound of shin in an hour and a half will be cooked but still firm; shin is collagen-rich and wants three hours to go truly tender. The recipe uses it chiefly to flavour the broth, and simply lifts it out before serving without saying what becomes of it. If you want to serve it, give it longer and add the bouquet later so the herbs do not stew out.
- The marrowboneAsk a butcher for a cut centre-cut beef marrowbone. It contributes richness and gelatin; the marrow itself can be spooned out and spread on the bread rather than thrown away with the bone.
- Chervil and leeksChervil is sold fresh only sporadically; a little fresh tarragon plus extra parsley approximates its anise note, though nothing matches it exactly. Split and wash the leeks thoroughly before tying them in the bundle.
- The bread stepOrdinary loaf bread will dissolve. Use genuinely stale open-crumb French bread cut a quarter-inch thick. The recipe gives no oven temperature, only the six minutes, so a hot oven is implied rather than stated; watch the slices rather than the clock. "Skim fat from surface of soup and pour over bread" most likely means the fat, not the soup — the slices are moistened with the skimmed fat and crisped, then the soup goes over them in the tureen at the end.
- Cheese at tableThe Parmesan or Swiss cheese is passed separately rather than stirred in, which lets each diner control the salt. Grate it coarsely; fine powder disappears into hot broth.
Garbure is the great soup of Gascony and the Bearn, in southwest France — traditionally a thick peasant pot of cabbage, beans, root vegetables and preserved goose or pork, dense enough that a spoon was said to stand up in it. What appears here is a restaurant refinement of it: the cabbage and confit are gone, the base is a clear beef broth, and the clearest survival of the original is the bread, since garbure was commonly poured over slices of stale loaf in the bowl. The name is generally traced to the Gascon garburo, itself often linked to Spanish garbias, a mixed stew. The "Claremont" tag follows the habit of naming dishes for the house that served them; the Claremont Inn, overlooking the Hudson from Riverside Drive, was among New York's fashionable dining rooms in this period, and collections of this kind are full of such attributions to hotels, restaurants and patrons.