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Potage, Mousquetaire
Finely slice eight medium, sound, peeled, raw potatoes and place in a saucepan with a pint well trimmed and cleaned sorrel, one pound fresh mutton bones, a bay leaf, one bean garlic, one quart broth and two quarts water. Season with two teaspoons salt, half teaspoon pepper and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Lightly mix and slowly boil one and a half hours. Press through a sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into another saucepan, add half pint cooked green peas and the leaves of two branches chervil, lightly mix, boil five minutes, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A French peasant-style sorrel and potato soup, sieved smooth and finished with peas and chervil. Nothing here is difficult, but three of the ingredients need translating and the liquid ratio needs watching.
- "One bean garlic"This is a clove, not a head; "bean" here most likely renders the French gousse (pod), a usage that turns up in period translations of French cookbooks. One clove for three quarts of soup is a background note, not a flavour.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. Grate the nutmeg fresh; pre-ground has almost no aromatic left after a ninety-minute boil.
- SorrelA pint means a pint of loosely packed leaves, roughly 3 to 4 ounces. Sorrel is sharply acidic and turns a drab olive within seconds of heat; here it goes in at the start and is sieved out, so colour is not an issue. Farmers' markets and some Eastern European grocers carry it; spinach with a squeeze of lemon is a substitute in body but not in character.
- Mutton bonesA pound of fresh mutton bone is the backbone of the flavour and is now a special order from a butcher. Lamb neck bones or shank bones work; ask for them cut so the marrow is exposed. Roasting them first will darken the soup, which this recipe does not want.
- The double strainingThe sieve pulls out bone, bay and fibre; the cheesecloth catches the fine sorrel and potato grit that would make the soup gritty on the tongue. Skip the second pass and the texture suffers noticeably. Do not push starchy potato through with force — work it gently or the soup goes gluey.
- Liquid and reductionThree quarts of liquid held at a boil for an hour and a half will lose a noticeable amount to evaporation, more if the pan is uncovered. Keep it at a bare simmer and check the seasoning after straining; the two teaspoons salt are calculated for the original volume.
- ChervilChervil is delicate and anise-scented, and its flavour is largely gone after five minutes of boiling. Strip the leaves from the stems and consider holding half of them back to scatter in the tureen.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect somewhere in the region of two to two and a half quarts finished, serving six to eight as a first course.
- A note on sorrel and oxalic acidSorrel is naturally high in oxalates, which is what gives it the lemony bite. In soup quantities it is ordinary food, but it is worth knowing if you cook for someone with kidney stones.
Sorrel-and-potato purée is one of the oldest patterns in French domestic cooking, appearing under many names — potage santé, potage Germiny when enriched with egg yolk and cream. The mousquetaire label is the sort of romantic garnish-name that proliferated in late nineteenth-century restaurant French; in classical nomenclature the name attaches chiefly to a mayonnaise-based sauce, and what it was meant to signal here is anyone's guess. What makes the recipe worth keeping is the sorrel itself, a kitchen-garden staple across northern Europe for centuries and often said to have been the standard sour note in cooking before lemons were cheap and universal. Its near-disappearance from English-speaking markets in the twentieth century probably says more about the industrialisation of produce — sorrel wilts fast and ships badly — than about anyone's taste.