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Potage, Celery, Au Lait D'Amandes
Pare off all stale and green leaves from two stalks crisp celery. Cut it into fine pieces, plunge in cold water and thoroughly wash; drain well on a sieve, then place in a large saucepan two quarts cold water; season with one and a half teaspoons salt, one teaspoon fine sugar and two saltspoons cayenne pepper. Cover the pan and let simmer for forty minutes. Strain the celery broth into another saucepan. Pound the cooked celery in a mortar to a pulp and replace it in the broth, then have it come to a simmering point on the range. Plunge half pound almonds into a pint boiling water for five minutes; drain, peel and pound in the mortar to a paste; then place in a saucepan with pint milk and boil for fifteen minutes; add it to the celery, mix well and boil all together for ten minutes. Mix in another saucepan one ounce butter with three tablespoons flour, thoroughly heat for two minutes, then pour the soup over this roux and briskly mix with a wooden spoon while boiling for five minutes. Dilute one egg yolk with half gill cream and add to the potage; lightly mix for two minutes without boiling. Strain through a sieve, then through a cheesecloth into a soup tureen and serve with bread croutons separately.
An almond-thickened celery soup from the era when a mortar did the work of a blender. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the measurements will mislead a modern reader and one step decides whether the soup is silky or scrambled.
- "Two stalks celery" means two whole headsIn 1900 usage a stalk is the entire bunch, what a supermarket now sells as a head of celery. Two ribs would vanish in two quarts of water; use two heads, trimmed of the coarse green tops.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of cayenne is half a teaspoon — assertively hot for two and a half quarts of soup. Half a gill is a quarter cup of cream.
- The egg yolk is the hingeOnce the yolk and cream go in, the soup must not return to a boil or the yolk curdles and no amount of straining will save the texture. Take the pan off the heat, temper the yolk with a ladle of hot soup first, then stir it back in.
- Mortar workA blender or food processor does the celery pulp and the almond paste in seconds. The almonds should go as fine as you can get them — grit here survives both sieve and cheesecloth.
- Blanching the almondsFive minutes in boiling water loosens the skins; they slip off between finger and thumb while still warm. Use plain sweet almonds, not roasted or salted; pre-ground almond flour will not work up into the same paste.
- The roux is added backwardsCooking the butter and flour two minutes gives a white roux with no colour. Pouring hot soup onto it rather than the reverse works, but add the first cup slowly and whisk, or you get lumps that the final straining will only partly hide.
- Double strainingThe sieve catches almond fragments and celery fibre; the cheesecloth is what gives the final smoothness. Do not skip it, and expect to lose some volume.
- YieldRoughly six to eight servings as a first course. Croutons are served separately so they stay crisp.
Au lait d'amandes — with almond milk — points to one of the oldest thickening techniques in European cookery. Ground almonds boiled with water or milk gave medieval and Renaissance kitchens a rich, pale liaison that carried no meat and so could be served on fast days, and the practice long outlived its religious reason: almond milk soups persisted in French classical cooking as a way to get body and a distinctive sweetness without stock. This version compounds the effect, thickening with almonds, a flour roux and an egg-and-cream liaison all at once, which is characteristic of the elaborate hotel-kitchen style Filippini and his contemporaries recorded. A delicate white celery potage was exactly the kind of opening a formal dinner of the period expected — mild, strained smooth, and served with nothing more than croutons alongside.