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Potage, Puree Colbert
Separate the leaves from the stalks of two heads green chicory, wash well and drain, then plunge in a quart boiling water for five minutes; drain, place in a saucepan with one and a half ounces butter, set on the fire and cook for ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile; dredge in two ounces flour and stir well while heating for three minutes. Moisten with three quarts water, adding one onion with two cloves stuck in it, two branches each celery and parsley. Season with a light tablespoon salt, a saltspoon sugar, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well and let gently simmer for one and a half hours, strain through a sieve into a basin, then replace in the saucepan, add a gill milk and let boil for five minutes. Dilute two egg yolks with a half gill cream, add to the puree, mix while heating without boiling, for five minutes, strain through a Chinese strainer into a soup tureen and serve with six poached eggs separately.
A classic French liaison soup: a chicory purée thickened with flour, then finished with egg yolks and cream. Everything hinges on the last five minutes.
- Never let the liaison boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, hold the soup below a simmer — around 175F — for the five minutes of heating. A boil curdles the yolks and no amount of straining will bring it back.
- What "green chicory" meansNot Belgian endive, which is the blanched white forced chicon. This is the leafy green chicory sold as curly endive, frisee or escarole; the recipe gives no weight, so two heads is left to the cook's judgement.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, so the soup takes 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon — which makes the cayenne a full 1/2 teaspoon. That is assertive for a delicate purée; start with a quarter of it and adjust.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. A regular fine sieve works; press the purée through with a ladle rather than letting it drip.
- The blanching stepFive minutes in boiling water is a standard way to soften chicory's bitterness. The recipe says only to drain; draining thoroughly before the leaves go into the butter will help the flour take.
- Volume and reductionThree quarts of water for two heads of chicory gives a thin, loose puree, and an hour and a half of gentle simmering will reduce it somewhat, though the recipe gives no final volume. If it is still watery after straining, reduce it before the milk goes in, not after.
- The poached eggsPoached eggs are the usual Colbert garnish, and six of them suggests one per serving; the recipe simply says to serve them separately. Poach them soft and keep them warm.
- YieldSix servings, as the six eggs indicate.
A soup labelled a la Colbert in this period is usually garnished with poached eggs, though the name is attached to other dishes -- sole Colbert, Colbert butter -- that involve no eggs at all. It is traditionally linked to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, though the connection is culinary flattery rather than documented fact. The dish belongs to the family of potages purees -- a vegetable cooked down, bound with roux, sieved, then enriched at the last moment with a yolk-and-cream liaison. Chicory was a common and inexpensive green in France, faintly bitter and available through the cold months, and blanching before cooking was one usual way to tame that bitterness.