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Garbure with Cucumbers
Peel two large and rather green cucumbers, cut in quarters, remove the seeds, then cut in one-inch-long strips and plunge in boiling water for three minutes. Drain, heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a frying pan, add cucumbers, sprinkle a teaspoon sugar over and brown a light colour, lightly stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two quarts broth and a pint of water, add an onion with two cloves stuck in it. Tie in a bunch one leek, two branches celery, two branches parsley and one branch chervil; add to the soup. Season with a level tablespoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, slowly boil one hour, then remove the herbs and onions. Cut six slices from a loaf of French bread, place them on a tin. Skim fat from surface of soup, pour over the slices of bread and set them in oven until a nice golden colour. Remove, place the slices in a hot soup tureen, pour the soup over and serve with two ounces of Parmesan cheese, separately.
RACK OF VEAL BRAISE WITH GLAZED ONIONS Neatly trim off the spinal bone from a three-pound tender white rack of veal. Arrange a mirepoix at bottom of a braising pan, lay veal over, season with teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg; pour in a tablespoon of melted butter at bottom of the pan. Cover pan, set on fire ten minutes, add a quarter pint white wine and let reduce to a third of the quantity, then pour in one and a half gills demi-glace and one gill tomato sauce. Cover pan, set in oven fifty minutes. Remove, place veal on a large dish, arrange a glazed onion garnishing around veal. Skim fat from sauce. Reduce the sauce ten minutes on range, then strain it through a Chinese strainer over the veal and serve.
Two dishes run together on one page: a clear cucumber garbure and a braised rack of veal. Both are written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen around 1900, and both assume a stock pot already on the stove.
- Cucumbers, "rather green"This most likely means firm and underripe rather than the seedy, watery cucumbers of late summer. Two large slicing cucumbers or three or four Persian ones work; the recipe directs peeling and seeding in any case.
- The three-minute blanch mattersThe three-minute blanch -- A brief plunge in boiling water pre-cooks the strips before they are browned in butter and given an hour in the broth; without it they are likelier to break down over the long boil.
- Salt with the broth in mindA level tablespoon of salt is calculated for unsalted homemade broth. With commercial stock, add a fraction of it and correct at the end, after the hour of reduction has concentrated everything.
- Chervil and the herb bundleChervil is faintly anise-scented and wilts fast; if none is available, a few extra parsley stems and a small sprig of tarragon give a near approximation. Tying the leek, celery, parsley and chervil together is purely so they lift out in one motion.
- Browning the breadThe recipe gives no temperature: the slices are moistened with skimmed soup and set in the oven only until golden. A hot oven, watched, is the intent; a slow one will leave them soggy.
- YieldSix slices of bread, six servings. The finished soup is thin and clear by design, not a thick vegetable potage.
- Gills, saltspoons, mirepoixA gill is half a cup, so a gill and a half of demi-glace is 3/4 cup; a saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. The mirepoix here is the classic diced carrot, onion and celery, often with a little ham or bacon, laid down as a bed so the veal does not scorch.
- Braising the veal"Set on fire ten minutes" means over direct heat, covered, to sweat the mirepoix and start the meat. The book gives no oven temperature for the fifty minutes that follow; a moderate oven suits a braise, and 145F to 150F at the centre of a three-pound rack is a better guide than the clock.
- Demi-glace and the Chinese strainerDemi-glace is a reduced brown sauce built on brown stock; the concentrated refrigerated tubs sold today are strong, so dilute to a pourable sauce consistency. A Chinese strainer is a chinois, and a fine mesh sieve does the same job.
Garbure belongs to Gascony and Béarn, where it is a thick peasant soup of cabbage, beans, confit and whatever the garden gives, ladled over stale bread until the spoon stands up in it. What appears here shares the name and the bread-and-cheese finish, but little else: the cabbage and pork have been replaced by glazed cucumber strips in a clear broth, the sort of translation of a country soup that hotel kitchens of the 1890s and 1900s performed routinely for menus written in French. The pairing on the page with a rack of veal braised on a mirepoix and finished with demi-glace and tomato sauce points to a professional kitchen: the two recipes assume a stockpot, a sauce base and a garnish of glazed onions all standing ready, which is how a brigade kitchen works and how a home kitchen does not.