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Potage Au Lait D'Amande
Place three and a half pints white broth in saucepan with a finely chopped onion, teaspoon chopped parsley, the leaves from two branches chervil and half bean chopped garlic. Season with a light teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, add three ounces raw rice with half ounce good butter, then let slowly boil for thirty-five minutes. Scald three ounces almonds in boiling water for three minutes, drain and peel them, place in a mortar and pound to a paste. Take paste out and place in a saucepan with one pint milk and boil for ten minutes, stirring once in a while, then press milk through a cheesecloth into soup. Mix well, boil for ten minutes more, pour soup into a tureen, and serve with six slices of toasted French bread in soup.
A French almond-milk soup thickened with rice, of the sort that turns up in early twentieth-century hotel kitchens under its Lenten-sounding name. The one thing to watch is the almond milk: it goes in near the end and must not be boiled hard, or the emulsion breaks and the soup turns grainy.
- White brothThis means a pale, unbrowned stock — veal or chicken simmered without roasting the bones, and unsalted or lightly salted. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; skip any stock with tomato or browned aromatics, which will muddy the colour the dish depends on.
- Quantities in cupsThree and a half pints is 7 cups; the pint of milk is 2 cups. Three ounces of rice is a scant half cup, and three ounces of almonds is about two-thirds of a cup, whole.
- "Half bean chopped garlic"Probably a piece of garlic about the size of a bean, i.e. rather less than a whole clove, finely minced; the measure is unusual and the reading is a guess. Either way the garlic is background seasoning here, not a flavour note.
- ChervilTwo branches means two sprigs, leaves only. Chervil is faintly anise-like and fades fast; if you cannot find it, a little parsley plus a few tarragon leaves is closer than parsley alone.
- The riceThirty-five minutes at a slow boil is deliberate — the rice is meant to collapse and body the soup, so use a starchy medium or long-grain white rice, not parboiled or basmati. Stir the bottom occasionally; a rice soup at a lazy simmer will scorch.
- Pounding the almondsA mortar gives the fine paste that releases the most milk. A food processor works if you pulse the drained, peeled almonds with a few spoonfuls of the milk to keep them from oiling into butter. Blanched slivered almonds save the peeling step.
- StrainingPress the milk through doubled cheesecloth and wring the bundle hard to get the last of the liquid out. The spent almond meal can be discarded or kept for another use; it is not returned to the soup.
- The final boilThe recipe says to boil ten minutes more; a gentle simmer with stirring will do the same work, and a hard rolling boil risks separating the almond milk and catching the rice starch on the pan bottom.
- Yield and servingThe six slices of toast tell you it serves six. Toast the bread dry and put it in the tureen or the bowls just before the soup goes in, so it softens without dissolving.
Medieval and early modern cooks pounded almonds with water because the resulting milk kept better than dairy and, crucially, was permitted on the many fast days when milk and butter were not. By the time this book was compiled, that religious logic had largely dissolved and the almond had become a mark of refinement rather than a Lenten obligation. The construction here is classic French *potage lié*: rice cooked to the point of collapse to give body without flour, and a fragrant liquid added at the end. The bit of garlic and the chervil place it in the everyday professional repertoire rather than the grand one; the toasted French bread in the tureen is the oldest gesture in the whole recipe, a survival of the medieval sop — the word *soup* comes via Old French *soupe*, a piece of bread soaked in broth, which shares a root with *sop* rather than descending from it.