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Potage Vermicelli, Suisse
Place in a saucepan a three-pound piece of beef from the short ribs or flank, pour in five quarts water and add a tablespoon salt. Let slowly come to a boil, skim fat off surface, then add two well-cleaned carrots and one turnip, a good-sized onion with two cloves stuck in it, two branches celery, a sprig thyme and bay leaf. Cover the pan and let slowly boil for three hours, being careful to skim fat off once in a while and to keep soup at same simmering point from beginning to end. Lift up beef (keep it for to-morrow's lunch), strain broth through cheesecloth into another saucepan and let come to a boil, then add a finely sliced, well-cleaned leek, a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, the leaves of two branches chervil, and let gently boil for forty-five minutes. Break three ounces vermicelli on a plate, add it to broth, lightly mix and let boil for fifteen minutes, pour soup into a tureen and serve with a little grated Swiss cheese separately.
A plain boiled-beef broth finished with pasta — the hinge is temperature control, since the recipe says twice to hold the same simmering point throughout. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the broth beyond rescue.
- Pot size and yieldFive quarts of water plus 3 lb of beef and vegetables needs an 8-quart stockpot or larger. The pan is covered for the long simmer, so losses are modest; expect somewhere in the region of three to four quarts of finished soup, enough for eight to ten as a first course.
- "Let slowly boil" means simmerRead every instance of boil in this recipe as a bare simmer, 180-190F, with the surface just trembling. The direction to keep the soup at the same simmering point from beginning to end is the whole technique.
- The vermicelli timingFifteen minutes may well reduce modern dried vermicelli to mush. Today's fine strands, broken onto a plate as directed, need only 3-5 minutes in simmering broth. Add them at the end, taste, and serve immediately.
- SaltOne tablespoon in five quarts is light seasoning, and the soup is finished with salty cheese. Season to taste at the end rather than relying on the initial addition.
- DegreasingSkimming with a spoon gets some of it; chilling the strained broth overnight and lifting the solid cap off gets all of it. If you go that route, cook the leek, parsley and chervil stage the next day.
- ChervilTwo branches of fresh chervil are called for and it is rarely stocked. Flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves approximates its faint anise note; leaving it out simply makes a plainer broth.
- Swiss cheeseHere this means Gruyere or Emmental, grated fine and passed at the table so each person adds their own. Pre-shredded supermarket 'Swiss' is dusted with anti-caking starch, which can cloud the broth.
- The beefFlank simmered three hours comes out fully cooked but lean and fibrous; short ribs, being fattier, fare rather better. The recipe directs that the meat be kept for tomorrow's lunch, and it is good sliced cold with mustard, cornichons and a vinaigrette.
This is the Swiss version of the household soup that anchored dinner across much of nineteenth-century Europe: a single pot of beef and root vegetables yielding both a clear broth for the first course and a piece of boiled meat for a later meal. The French called the method pot-au-feu; the frugality is the point, since one three-pound cut of cheap beef feeds a table twice. What marks it as Suisse in this collection is the finish: grated Gruyere or Emmental passed separately.