Home › The World's Kitchen › Potpourri, Bonne Famille
Potpourri, Bonne Famille
Cut in one-inch square pieces half pound raw lean beef, half pound ditto veal, half pound ditto mutton, and half pound ditto fresh lean pork. Then cut in quarter-inch pieces half pound raw lean ham; place above articles in a roasting pan, lightly baste with a little melted lard, then set in a brisk oven twenty minutes or until it obtains a nice golden colour. Remove, take up meat and place in an earthen pot. Cut in half-inch pieces two medium carrots, two medium turnips, two white onions, two raw sound potatoes and two medium parsnips, and add to pot with chopped rind of a lemon, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half teaspoon chopped chervil and a chopped sound bean garlic. Season with good teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, saltspoon thyme, saltspoon grated nutmeg and two saltspoons ground mixed allspice. Moisten with a pint cider, a pint of broth, one gill of demi-glace and one gill tomato sauce; lightly mix with spoon, place cover on. Make a stiff dough with quarter pound flour and half gill water, and arrange around joints of cover and pan to prevent evaporation. Set in a moderate oven two and a half hours. Remove and serve without uncovering.
A five-meat sealed braise, essentially a French reading of the Spanish olla podrida. The technique is simple but the units and the two sauces need translating before you start.
- The hinge: seal it and leave it aloneThe flour-and-water paste luted around the lid is what makes this dish work — nothing evaporates, so the pint of cider and pint of broth stay in the pot and the meats braise in near-sealed steam. The instruction to serve without uncovering is not theatre; the aroma released at table is the point. A heavy Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid does the same job, and a sheet of foil crimped under the lid is a fair modern substitute for the paste.
- Oven temperaturesA "brisk oven" for the initial browning is roughly 400-425F. The long braise in a "moderate oven" is about 350F, and 325F is safer over two and a half hours in a sealed pot.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so the demi-glace and the tomato sauce are 4 fl oz each. A saltspoon is a scant quarter teaspoon — the thyme, nutmeg, and the two saltspoons of allspice are small amounts, deliberately.
- Demi-glace and tomato sauceBoth are classical French sauce preparations — demi-glace a reduction of espagnole, tomato sauce one of the classical sauces — assumed in a professional kitchen of this period, not jarred pasta sauce. Half a cup of good reduced veal or beef stock stands in for the demi-glace; for the tomato sauce use a plain cooked one, tomato passata reduced with a little butter, or half a cup of purée.
- The ciderGenuinely ambiguous. In an English or French context "cider" normally means the fermented drink, which is what the acidity here wants; American books of the period may mean sweet cider. Hard dry cider gives the better result with this much rich meat.
- The meatsTwo and a half pounds of trimmed meat in total, in half-pound lots. Use chuck for the beef, shoulder for veal and mutton (lamb shoulder is the practical substitute), and shoulder for pork. The ham is cut smaller because it is there as seasoning, not as a portion.
- Lemon rind and garlic"Chopped rind of a lemon" means zest only — pare it thin and leave the white pith behind, or the long braise turns bitter. A "bean" of garlic is one clove.
- The potatoesCut in half-inch pieces and given two and a half hours, they will soften a great deal and help thicken the liquid; if you want them to hold their shape, use a waxy variety in larger pieces.
- Vessel and yieldEarthenware is best started in a cold oven and heated with it. Modern earthenware and stoneware vary in tolerance for thermal shock, so check the maker's rating or use cast iron. The pot should serve six to eight.
Potpourri is literally "rotten pot," a French calque of the Spanish olla podrida — the great mixed meat-and-root stew of the Iberian kitchen; the sense of podrida is usually explained as meat cooked until it collapses, though the word's origin is disputed. The name reached English in the early seventeenth century and eventually drifted away from food altogether to mean a jar of dried petals, which is the only sense most readers now know. Bonne famille appears to mark it as a plain household version: no garnish, no straining, everything eaten from the pot it cooked in. Luting a pot shut belongs to an older tradition of slow cooking in a cooling bread oven or overnight in the range. Its presence in a book called The International Cook Book is typical of the era's grand-hotel cookery, which collected regional dishes from across Europe and rewrote them in French professional language for American kitchens.