Home › The World's Kitchen › Potage, Balmord
Potage, Balmord
Cut in small squares three sound, seeded green peppers and the white parts of three leeks, place in a saucepan with an ounce butter, and cook on range for ten minutes, lightly stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two quarts of broth, one quart of water, and add two pounds raw veal or beef bones. Season with a heavy teaspoon salt and half a teaspoon pepper, let boil for fifty-five minutes. Break three ounces of spaghetti into half-inch pieces and add them to the soup, then cook for fifteen minutes. Cut two medium, peeled, raw potatoes into quarter-inch squares and add to the soup and let simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the leaves from two branches chervil and boil five minutes. Remove bones, skim fat from surface. Pour soup into a soup tureen, and serve with a little grated Parmesan cheese, separately.
A clear vegetable-and-pasta soup built on a bone-enriched broth. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence of additions matters more than the clock, since the pasta and potato both keep cooking in the hot tureen.
- "Cook on range"Simply means over direct heat on the stovetop, as opposed to in the oven. Sweat the peppers and leeks in the butter over medium-low heat so they soften without browning.
- Liquid and bonesTwo quarts broth plus one quart water gives three quarts, which reduces during the roughly hour and a half of simmering. The two pounds of raw veal or beef bones are there for body and gelatin, not meat; ask a butcher for knuckle or marrow bones.
- Total cooking timeAdd it up: 55 minutes, then 15, then 15, then 5, or about an hour and a half of simmering after the initial sweat. Keep it at a bare simmer rather than the "boil" the original calls for, or the broth will cloud.
- The pastaThree ounces of spaghetti broken into half-inch lengths will be well past al dente after 35 minutes in the pot. If the soup is not being served immediately, cook the pasta separately and add it to the tureen, or the pieces will swell and turn the broth starchy.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh; flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon approximates its faint anise note. Whatever herb you use, stir it in off the heat rather than boiling it five minutes, which drives off the aroma.
- SeasoningA heavy teaspoon of salt for three quarts is light, which suggests the broth was expected to be unseasoned. With commercial stock, add none at the start and season at the end.
- FinishingSkim the fat properly. With bones in the pot there will be a good deal, and the soup tastes flabby if it is left. Chilling the pot briefly makes the fat easy to lift.
- YieldAbout three quarts, serving eight to ten as a first course. The Parmesan is passed separately, for each diner to add as wanted.
This is one of the many potages in the international-hotel repertoire that carry a proper name of murky origin, the sort of soup a chef named after a patron, a colleague or a country house and then entered in the kitchen book as though the name explained itself. The construction is thoroughly recognizable: a sweat of aromatics, a bone-strengthened broth, a starch, a green herb, and grated cheese offered on the side in the Italian manner. Cookbooks aimed at professional and ambitious domestic kitchens alike were full of such formulas, precisely weighed and timed, a soup that any competent cook on the line could reproduce identically at noon and at seven.