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Potage Printanier, Grenat
Cut in small square pieces two medium carrots, one sound turnip, one medium onion, two branches celery and two leeks. Place these in a large saucepan with one and a half tablespoons melted butter and cook to a light brown, stirring once in a while. Then moisten with two quarts broth and half pint tomato juice, add one pound beef bones, season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Gently boil fifteen minutes, then add two ounces raw Italian rice, boil forty minutes more, then remove bones. Skin and cut in small square pieces three sound fresh tomatoes, add to the soup, skim fat from top, boil for five minutes, pour potage into a soup tureen and serve.
A brothy vegetable-and-rice soup, coloured garnet with tomato. The method is sound; only the rice timing needs rethinking.
- The riceForty minutes will reduce Italian rice to mush and cloud the broth with starch. Arborio or carnaroli is done in 16-18 minutes; add it for the last stretch of simmering and judge by bite, not clock. Two ounces is about a third of a cup, which is the right restraint for a clear spring soup.
- Half a pint of tomato juiceOne cup. In 1906 this would have been juice pressed and strained from fresh tomatoes rather than the salted canned product; if you use commercial juice, cut back the teaspoon of salt until you have tasted.
- The beef bonesOne pound of raw bones simmered under an hour contributes very little. Either roast them first at 425F until well browned, or skip them and start with a genuinely good beef stock, which is what the broth in the ingredient list assumes anyway.
- "Sound"Filippini uses it here for unblemished, firm produce, free of soft spots. It is a shopping instruction, not a preparation one.
- Browning the mirepoixThe light brown on the diced carrot, turnip, onion, celery and leek is where the depth comes from. Keep the heat moderate and give it a good ten minutes; pale vegetables make a thin soup no amount of simmering will fix.
- Skinning the tomatoesScore, thirty seconds in boiling water, then into cold water and the skins slip off. They go in at the end so they hold their shape and their fresh acidity, which is the point of the last five minutes.
- YieldTwo quarts of broth plus additions, less what boils away over the best part of an hour, makes roughly two quarts finished, or six to eight first-course servings. Skim the fat carefully before serving, as the recipe says; this soup is meant to look clean.
Potage printanier is the standard French name for a spring soup of vegetables cut small and neat, and grenat — garnet — describes the colour the tomato gives it, the kind of appended descriptor that let a hotel kitchen list variations of the same base on successive days' menus. Alexander Filippini, who spent decades at Delmonico's in New York before compiling The International Cook Book, wrote in exactly that idiom: a French professional vocabulary applied to an American larder, here with Italian rice as the garnish.