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Potage, Mussulman
Blanch one pint dry, split green peas in boiling water five minutes. Remove and thoroughly drain on sieve. Peel, wash and slice fifteen Jerusalem artichokes; add to peas. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a large saucepan, add one sliced onion, two sliced leeks, quarter pound salt pork, cut in small pieces, and two bay leaves; gently brown five minutes, then add peas and artichokes with two quarts water, one quart broth and two branches chervil. Season with two teaspoons salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover pan and gently boil two hours and a half. Remove, pass the puree through sieve into a basin, then through Chinese strainer into another saucepan, pour in one pint tomato sauce, mix well, boil five minutes, pour soup into a tureen and serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A long-simmered split pea and Jerusalem artichoke puree, finished with tomato sauce. The method is straightforward; the vagueness lies in the measurements by volume and in a cooking time set for a coal range.
- A pint of dry peasMeasured dry, a pint of split green peas is about 2 cups, roughly 1 lb. Modern split peas need no soaking; the five-minute blanch is not long enough to soften them, whatever purpose the author intended it to serve.
- Fifteen Jerusalem artichokesTubers vary wildly in size; fifteen medium ones is somewhere between 1½ and 2 lb. Weigh rather than count. Once peeled and sliced they discolour quickly, so drop them into acidulated water until the pot is ready.
- Inulin, not starchJerusalem artichokes store carbohydrate as inulin, which many people digest poorly and which lends the sunchoke its reputation for gas. Long cooking helps somewhat but does not eliminate it; serve modest portions the first time.
- The simmer is too longThe simmer is long -- Split peas collapse in roughly 45 to 60 minutes and the artichokes sooner. Ninety minutes is ample, and a shorter cook keeps the peas tasting green rather than flat.
- Salt pork and the saltA quarter pound of salt pork carries a good deal of salt into the pot, and the broth adds more. Hold back most of the two teaspoons until after the puree is strained, then correct.
- Two strainingsThe "Chinese strainer" is a chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Passing first through an ordinary sieve, then the chinois, gives the velvety texture the recipe is after. A blender followed by a single pass through a fine sieve does the same work faster; the pork and bay leaves should be fished out first.
- Tomato sauceIn a kitchen of this period this means a cooked, thickened tomato sauce, not ketchup and not canned puree. A pint of plain tomato passata, reduced a little and seasoned, is the nearest honest substitute.
- ChervilTwo branches means two sprigs of fresh chervil, an anise-scented herb that is hard to find and loses everything when dried. Fresh parsley with a few tarragon leaves approximates it.
- YieldTwo quarts water, one quart broth and a pint of tomato sauce make three and a half quarts of liquid in, less whatever the long covered boil drives off; expect somewhere around 2½ to 3 quarts finished, eight to ten servings as a first course.
"Mussulman" is an old English rendering, via Persian and Turkish, of the word for a Muslim, and in the grand-restaurant naming of the period such epithets generally functioned as menu labels rather than claims of provenance: national and ethnic tags were attached to soups and garnishes as shorthand for a fixed combination. Whether "Mussulman" was a codified garnish name in the same way as à la turque or à la russe is not clear. What the name signals here is probably the tomato finish and the pulse base, both associated in French kitchens with the eastern Mediterranean. The Jerusalem artichoke, meanwhile, is neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke but a North American sunflower tuber; the name is generally traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole. By the time this book appeared the tuber had been in European kitchens for some three centuries and had settled into exactly this role — a cheap thickening vegetable for winter soups, cooked down until nobody could identify it.