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Potage of Lamb, Piedmontaise
Cut a pound of raw lean lamb from the shoulder into small dice pieces; place them in a saucepan with two sound onions cut in small pieces, three ditto leeks, one ditto seeded green pepper and two ounces raw lean ham, all cut in small pieces. Add two tablespoons melted butter and cook on a brisk fire ten minute, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Moisten with two quarts of broth or hot water, add one pound raw beef bones. Season with teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Cover the pan and let slowly boil thirty minutes. Break two ounces Italian macaroni in half-inch pieces, add to the soup with two ounces raw rice and boil forty minutes more. Take up the bones, add two gills tomato sauce. Boil five minutes, skim fat from the surface, strew in two ounces grated Parmesan cheese, mix well, pour the soup in a soup tureen and serve.
A substantial one-pot lamb soup, closer to a minestrone than a clear potage. The one thing worth changing is the pasta timing.
- The pasta timing is the hingeForty minutes of boiling reduces broken macaroni to paste. Add the rice first and give it about 15 minutes, then add the macaroni for the last 8-10 minutes so it is still firm when the soup goes to the table.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three of them is 3/4 teaspoon pepper. A gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato sauce is one cup.
- "Brisk fire" and "slowly boil"Brisk fire means medium-high on a modern burner, enough to sweat and lightly colour the meat and vegetables without scorching. "Slowly boil" means a bare simmer, which keeps the lamb from tightening.
- Tomato sauceIn a book of this period this means a plain cooked tomato sauce, not a seasoned pasta sauce. Passata or crushed tomatoes cooked down briefly is the closer match; a jarred Italian-herb sauce will push the flavour somewhere else.
- The beef bonesA pound of raw beef bones is there for body, since the broth may be thin. Marrow or knuckle bones do the most good. Roasting them first is not in the original but darkens and deepens the result if you want that.
- Lamb shoulderShoulder is the right cut, though a pound of it diced small will still throw fat. The instruction to skim before the cheese goes in matters more than it looks; the Parmesan can help emulsify the fat into the broth if it is left there.
- Cheese off the heatStir the Parmesan in after the pan is off the burner. Held at a boil it turns stringy and can catch on the bottom of the pan.
- YieldTwo quarts of liquid plus rice, pasta and meat gives six to eight bowls as a first course, four as a main dish.
Filippini's "Piedmontaise" tag points to Piedmont in northwestern Italy. Alexander Filippini had been a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and his cookbooks worked through the world's cuisines the way a large restaurant kitchen did in that era, as a file of regional formulas a professional could execute on demand. The result is a dish that is recognisably Italian in structure but written in the French-trained idiom of the American hotel kitchen, which is why a rustic peasant soup arrives labelled a potage and finished in a soup tureen.