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Potage Pilaff, Turque
Wash well in cold water and drain on a sieve a quarter pint Italian rice. Place it in a saucepan with half pint tomato sauce, half pint broth, half ounce butter, a few very small pieces raw chicken (the equivalent of the leg of a chicken), one teaspoon salt, and half saltspoon Spanish saffron. Cover and set the pan on a slow fire and let cook for thirty minutes. Plunge six very fresh chicken livers in boiling water for one minute, remove, then cut into small square pieces and add to the rice. Moisten with one and a half quarts broth and two gills tomato sauce. Boil for twenty minutes. Skim the fat from the surface of the soup. Pour into a hot soup tureen and serve with a little grated Swiss cheese separately.
A soup built on the pilaf principle: rice cooked in a small amount of well-seasoned liquid first, then let out into broth. The measurements are volumetric throughout, which is where most of the confusion sits.
- The old measuresA gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato sauce is one cup. A quarter pint of rice is half a cup by volume, roughly 3 1/2 oz. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making half a saltspoon of saffron about 1/8 teaspoon of threads.
- Total liquidThe rice takes half a pint of broth and half a pint of tomato sauce in the first stage, then a further quart and a half of broth plus a cup of sauce. That is about two and a quarter quarts of liquid in all, which serves six to eight as a first course.
- Watch the riceFifty minutes of total cooking will reduce most rices to paste. Italian rice here means a short-grain risotto type; its starch is what gives the soup body, but check it at the thirty-minute mark and shorten the second boil if the grains have already gone soft.
- "Slow fire"The first stage is a bare simmer with the lid on "u2014 low heat, the liquid barely trembling. The rice should absorb rather than boil, or it will catch on the bottom of the pan before the thirty minutes are up.
- Why the livers are blanchedOne minute in boiling water firms the surface so the livers can be diced cleanly and will not disintegrate into the broth. Skip it and you get a muddy, grainy soup. They still need the full twenty minutes of simmering to cook through.
- Raw chicken in small pieces"The equivalent of the leg of a chicken" is roughly 4 oz of boned dark meat. Cut it small "u2014 quarter-inch dice "u2014 so it cooks in the same thirty minutes as the rice.
- Swiss cheeseIn a book of this period this means Gruyère or Emmental, not the pale processed slices sold under that name now. Grate it fine and pass it at the table; stirring it in will string.
- SkimmingThe instruction to skim is not optional with livers and dark meat in the pot. Pull the pan half off the heat for a minute so the fat gathers on one side, then lift it off with a spoon.
Pilaff is the Turkish pilav, itself from the Persian polow "u2014 rice cooked in seasoned liquid until it has absorbed all of it. What appears here is a French kitchen's reading of that dish: the rice is given the pilaf treatment first, then flooded with broth and turned into a potage, the name and the tureen and the passed cheese all belonging squarely to the Continental service of the period rather than to any Ottoman table. The saffron and tomato point toward the eastern Mediterranean generally, while the chicken livers and the grated Gruy en belong to the French repertoire the dish has been fitted into.