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Potage, Lomballe
Plunge one pint split green peas into boiling water for five minutes; drain well, then place the peas in a saucepan with three quarts boiling water and half gill white wine. Set the pan on the fire; season with two teaspoons salt, half teaspoon white pepper, adding half medium sliced carrot, half medium sliced onion, two sliced leeks, two chopped branches parsley, one medium peeled, raw minced potato, one clove crushed garlic, two ounces lean, raw ham and a sprig bay leaf. Cover the pan and let slowly boil for one hour and ten minutes. Strain through a fine sieve into another saucepan. Place on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil add one gill Brazilian tapioca. Mix well with a wooden spoon and let boil for twenty-five minutes; then add one gill cold milk; let boil again for two minutes, lightly mixing meanwhile. Pour it into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A strained split-pea broth bound with tapioca — lighter than a modern pea soup, and closer to what Escoffier's generation would have called Potage Lamballe. A few of the measures and one structural point need translating.
- Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a gill of white wine is 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons, and a gill each of tapioca and milk is half a cup each. The pint of split peas is a dry pint, roughly 2 cups or a scant pound.
- Brazilian tapiocaThis means small pearl tapioca made from manioc, the sort commonly used to thicken soups at the time. Do not substitute instant tapioca, which dissolves too quickly, or the large boba pearls, which will not break down in the time given. Half a cup in roughly two and a half quarts of strained broth should give a noticeably thickened soup.
- The soup is strained, not puréedThe soup is likely strained rather than puréed -- Everything goes through a fine sieve; the recipe does not direct that the pulp be pressed through, which would make the peas, ham and vegetables flavouring only. If you do press the pulp through you get a purée, a different and much heavier soup in which the tapioca is less evident.
- The five-minute blanchPlunging the peas into boiling water and draining removes dust and some of the raw-legume flavour. It is not a soak; the peas go into the fresh water still hot.
- Cooking time and volumeThree quarts down to what remains after 70 minutes of slow boiling, uncovered strain, then 25 minutes more with tapioca — expect substantial reduction. Keep the lid on as directed for the first stage or you will finish with too little liquid to carry the tapioca.
- The hamTwo ounces of lean raw ham means an uncooked cured ham — prosciutto crudo, speck, or a piece of country ham. A scrap of unsmoked bacon or a ham hock will do the same job; ordinary sliced deli ham adds almost nothing.
- The milk at the endAdd it cold and give it only the two minutes stated, stirring lightly. A long boil after the milk goes in risks catching on the bottom of the pan under the thickened tapioca.
- Seasoning and yieldTwo teaspoons of salt is measured against three quarts of water, but the ham also salts the pot — taste after straining rather than before. Serves six to eight as a first course.
The name is almost certainly a compositor's slip for Lamballe, a soup that appears in the classic French repertoire as a pea purée finished with tapioca. It is traditionally said to be named for the Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's companion at Versailles, though as with most nineteenth-century soup dedications the connection is honorific rather than documented. Its presence here is characteristic of the book, whose collections carry the grande cuisine soup list more or less intact into American household use, tapioca and all. Tapioca as a savoury thickener was thoroughly ordinary then, and it survived in restaurant soup work long after home cooks had moved it to the pudding column.