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Potage, Westphalian
Cut a half pound cooked lean ham in small pieces, place in mortar and pound to a paste, then transfer to a saucepan with two gills demi-glace, a half gill sherry, mix well and let reduce to half the quantity. Pour in two and a half quarts broth, add two branches parsley, a branch chervil, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne. Mix well with wooden spoon, let gently boil for one hour, then add little by little a half ounce fresh butter and mix while adding it. Place bread croutons in a soup tureen, strain potage through a Chinese strainer over it and serve.
A classical ham consommé built on demi-glace, thickened only by reduction and a little butter. Nothing here is difficult, but the salt arithmetic is where it succeeds or fails.
- Salt before anything elseGenuine Westphalian ham is dry-cured and heavily smoked, and the demi-glace and broth are both seasoned already. Add the half teaspoon of salt only after the hour-long simmer and reduction, tasting first; with a commercial stock base you may need none at all.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills demi-glace is 1 cup and half a gill of sherry is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, making the cayenne about 1/2 teaspoon for 2 1/2 quarts of soup — assertive but not unreasonable; add half and adjust.
- Mortar workThe pounding is meant to break the ham down so it will give up flavour to the liquid. A food processor does it in fifteen seconds; pulse to a coarse paste rather than a purée, since it is all strained out at the end anyway.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce let down with brown stock and reduced by half. Good jarred or frozen demi-glace works; a heavily reduced brown stock is the honest substitute. Thin canned gravy is not, as the body of the finished potage comes from here.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the fine conical sieve. Any fine-mesh strainer serves, and a pass through muslin gives the clarity the recipe is after. Press the solids only lightly or the soup will cloud.
- ChervilRarely stocked; it is delicate and anise-scented rather than grassy. A little tarragon plus parsley approximates it. Both herbs go in as whole sprigs and are removed with the straining.
- The butter finishWork it in off the heat or at a bare tremble, a piece at a time, as the recipe directs. Hard boiling afterwards tends to break the butter out again and leave it as fat on the surface.
- Croutons and yieldSomewhat under 2 1/2 quarts once the hour's simmer has taken its toll, giving roughly eight first-course servings. Cubed bread fried in butter or oven-dried holds up better in the tureen than untoasted bread.
Westphalia, in northwestern Germany, has been known for centuries for hams dry-cured and cold-smoked over beech and juniper — dense, dark and eaten raw in paper-thin slices much as prosciutto is. French classical kitchens borrowed the name as shorthand for "made with smoked ham," and a potage westphalien or a garnish à la westphalienne signalled that ham was the dominant flavour. The recipe's method is pure escoffier-era practice: a strongly flavoured paste bound with demi-glace, let down with broth, simmered, strained through the chinois and finished with raw butter, so that a soup of considerable depth arrives at the table. Its presence in a book organised as a tour of national cookery reflects the habit of the period's grand hotel and restaurant kitchens, which rendered regional specialities into the French repertoire and filed them under the place name.