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Potage, Lyon
Prepare a consomme, chop very finely two sound white onions and brown in a saucepan with an ounce butter for ten minutes, occasionally stirring; add three tablespoons flour and one tablespoon good curry powder. Strain the consomme through a cheesecloth into this pan, mix well and let come to a boil. Beat one raw egg yolk with a half gill cream in a bowl with two tablespoons sherry and add to the soup, mix well while heating without boiling for three minutes, remove and serve.
A classical curried consommé finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The original assumes you already have consommé on hand and never says how much, which is the main thing to settle before you start.
- Quantity of consomméNothing is stated. Three tablespoons flour and an ounce of butter make a roux sized for roughly 6 cups (1.5 quarts) of liquid; less than that and the soup will be pasty. Use a good clear beef or chicken consommé, or a well-reduced clarified stock.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of cream is 1/4 cup, 60 ml. The single egg yolk with that quantity of cream is a standard liaison, meant to thicken and enrich rather than to set.
- The hinge: never let it boil after the liaisonOnce the yolk and cream go in, hold the soup below a simmer. Above about 180F the yolk curdles and the soup goes grainy and cannot be brought back. Temper by whisking a ladle of hot soup into the yolk mixture first, then return it to the pan off direct heat.
- Cooking out the flour and curryThe recipe does bring the soup to a boil after the consommé goes in, which cooks the flour; even so, let the flour and curry powder cook in the butter with the onions for two or three minutes before the consommé is added, stirring, until the curry smells toasted rather than dusty.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of the period were generally mild and turmeric-heavy. Modern blends vary widely in heat; start with two teaspoons of a hot blend and adjust, and buy it recently if you can, since ground spice fades fast.
- StrainingStraining the consommé through cheesecloth directly onto the roux keeps the soup clear of any sediment from the clarification. Whisk as you pour or the flour will lump.
- SherryTwo tablespoons of a dry amontillado or oloroso, not cream sherry. It goes in with the liaison and is not boiled off, so its character carries straight through to the finished soup.
- Yield and serviceAbout six cups, serving four to six as a first course. Serve in warmed cups; the soup is thin-bodied and cools quickly.
French classical cookery named soups constantly after places, and by the early twentieth century a menu term like potage Lyon signalled a set of garnishes and finishes rather than any dish cooked in Lyon itself — here, browned onion, a light roux, and a yolk-and-cream liaison. The onion is the giveaway: Lyonnaise preparations are conventionally onion preparations, from pommes lyonnaise to sauce lyonnaise. Grafting curry powder onto that framework was thoroughly of its moment. Curry had been absorbed into European hotel cooking through the British Indian trade during the nineteenth century, and by the time this book appeared, curried cream soups appeared regularly on hotel and steamship menus on both sides of the Atlantic — mild, thickened, sherried, and aimed squarely at diners who wanted the suggestion of the exotic within a wholly French technique.