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Potage Tourin-Bordelais
Heat one tablespoon good oil in a large earthen soup pot, add four finely chopped medium onions, brown twenty minutes or until a nice golden colour, occasionally stirring; then add two finely chopped beans garlic, moisten with one quart finely crushed fresh tomatoes and two and a half quarts water; season with two teaspoons salt, half teaspoon sugar and half teaspoon white pepper. Tie in a bunch two leeks, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, two bay leaves, two cloves, a sprig thyme and a sprig marjoram; add to the soup, mix a little, cover pan, and let slowly boil for one hour and a half. Remove bunch of herbs, skim off fat, add a half ounce fresh, good butter, mix until well melted, pour soup into a hot tureen and serve with six slices of toasted French bread.
A one-pot Gascon onion and tomato soup that asks little beyond patience with the onions. Two phrases in the translation will trip you up before anything else does.
- "Two beans garlic" means two clovesThe French original would read deux gousses d'ail, and gousse is the word for a pod or husk, hence the literal "bean". Two cloves, finely chopped, is what is intended.
- The twenty-minute browning is the hingeEverything the soup tastes of comes from taking the onions to a genuine deep gold over moderate heat, not merely softening them. Rushing this on high heat gives scorched edges and a thin, sharp broth that the long simmer will not repair.
- Earthen potA glazed earthenware or enamelled cast-iron pot holds heat evenly, which is what the instruction is after. Any heavy-bottomed 6-quart stockpot works; a thin pan makes the onion stage much harder to control.
- Quantities and yieldOne quart of crushed tomatoes is roughly two 14-oz cans with their juice if good fresh ones are out of season. One quart of tomatoes plus 2½ quarts of water goes into the pot; after an hour and a half covered the finished soup will be somewhat under that 3½ quarts, in line with the six slices of bread the recipe calls for.
- The herb bundle is flavouring onlyThe two whole leeks go in tied with the herbs and come out again with them, so trim and wash them but do not bother slicing. If chervil is unavailable, leave it out rather than substituting; a little extra parsley is the nearest thing.
- Simmer, not boil"Slowly boil for one hour and a half" means a bare simmer with the lid on. A hard boil reduces the liquid too far and turns the tomato acidic and flat.
- Seasoning at the endHalf a teaspoon of sugar is there to offset acidic tomatoes; taste before adding it, since canned and ripe summer tomatoes vary widely. The half ounce of butter (one tablespoon) is mixed in until melted at the very end to round the soup out, and the soup goes straight to the tureen rather than boiling again.
- ServingTraditionally the toast goes in the bottom of the bowl and the soup is ladled over it so it softens; the recipe as written simply serves the six slices with the soup.
Tourin (also tourain or tourrin) is the everyday onion soup of Gascony and the Bordelais, and the origin of the name is unsettled. Unlike the Parisian onion soup thickened by beef stock and cheese, tourin is a water-based soup built on fat, onions and garlic — goose or duck fat in the Landes, oil nearer the coast — and it was for centuries a peasant supper rather than a restaurant dish. Versions are finished with a beaten egg trailed into the hot broth, or sharpened with vinegar; the addition of tomato, as here, marks it as the Bordelais variant and places it no earlier than the tomato's general acceptance in southwestern French cooking in the nineteenth century.