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Potage, Vert-Pre
Boil a pint dried, split green peas in a quart water for five minutes, then drain on a sieve. Place in saucepan with a pint well washed and drained fresh sorrel, a sliced each carrot and onion, two branches celery, two leeks, two branches parsley, two sliced, peeled, raw potatoes, a pound raw ham bones, three quarts and a half water, two teaspoons salt, a teaspoon sugar and half teaspoon pepper. Mix well, and let slowly boil for an hour and forty-five minutes, being careful to mix once in a while. Remove, press soup through a sieve into a basin, then through Chinese strainer into a saucepan, add three tablespoons cooked green peas, leaves of two branches chervil, and by little bits half an ounce butter. Mix well and boil for five minutes, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A classic French split-pea purée sharpened with sorrel. The technique is straightforward; the archaic vocabulary and the sorrel are what need translating.
- The hinge: blanch and drain the peasThe five-minute boil and drain is not a shortcut to cooking; it takes off the starchy scum thrown up by dried peas. Discard that water and start fresh with the three and a half quarts called for.
- MeasuresA pint of dried split peas is 2 cups, roughly 14 oz. A pint of fresh sorrel leaves, loosely packed, weighs only an ounce or two — well washed and drained, as instructed, since sorrel holds grit. Three and a half quarts of water is 14 cups (separate from the quart used for the initial five-minute boil).
- Chinese strainerA chinois: the conical fine-mesh strainer. The two-stage straining — pressed through a coarse sieve, then through the chinois — is what gives the soup its texture. A food mill on the medium plate followed by a fine strainer does the same work, as will a blender followed by the strainer.
- SorrelSorrel is the whole point of vert-pré and is sold at farmers' markets in spring; it collapses to nothing and tastes of lemon. If you cannot find it, young spinach with the juice of half a lemon added at the end is the usual stand-in, though it is not the same thing. Cook sorrel in stainless steel or enamel — its oxalic acid takes on a metallic taste in bare cast iron or aluminium.
- Raw ham bonesA pound of uncooked ham bone from a butcher. A smoked ham hock is the easiest modern substitute, but it is considerably saltier than fresh ham bone: hold back the two teaspoons of salt until after straining and season then.
- ChervilDelicate, anise-scented, and short-lived once cut; heat dulls the aroma, though here the recipe does give it a final five-minute boil with the butter. Flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon approximates it.
- The butterHalf an ounce is one tablespoon, worked in "by little bits" — monter au beurre. Whisk it in off a hard boil so it emulsifies rather than separating into slicks; a bare simmer for the final few minutes is enough.
- YieldPerhaps two to three quarts of finished soup once it has boiled down and been strained, serving eight or so as a first course. It thickens on standing and will need thinning with water or stock when reheated.
Vert-pré means "green meadow," a standing term in French kitchen usage for preparations coloured and flavoured green — sometimes watercress, sometimes sorrel and chervil, sometimes a garnish of peas and green beans. Here it names a split-pea purée lifted out of its wintry heaviness by sorrel's acidity and chervil's perfume, which is exactly how classical French practice used those two herbs: sorrel to cut richness, chervil for scent at the last moment. The recipe reflects the position French cooking held in early twentieth-century American cookbooks, where it supplied both the prestige dishes and the technical vocabulary — the chinois, the buttering off the heat, the double straining — that home cooks were being taught to admire. Sorrel was then a common kitchen-garden green in both Europe and America; its decline in general use in the United States is often attributed to the consolidation of market gardening around crops that ship well, since sorrel wilts within a day of cutting.