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Pumpkin Soup
Peel and seed a three-pound, sound ripe, fresh pumpkin, cut it into small pieces, then place in a saucepan with a sliced onion, two sliced leeks, two sliced branches celery, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bean garlic, two quarts broth, one quart water, two teaspoons salt, a tablespoon sugar and half teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan and let boil very slowly for an hour and a half, then add half ounce good butter and half pint hot milk. Mix well and boil for five minutes, strain through a sieve into a basin, then through a Chinese strainer into a soup tureen, and serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A straightforward French-style potage that happens to be built on pumpkin. The only real work is the double straining, and a blender does most of it now.
- "One bean garlic"A literal rendering of the French une gousse d'ail — one clove, not a head. The book's author, Alexander Filippini, wrote in this half-translated idiom throughout.
- Chinese strainerA chinois: the conical fine-mesh strainer, generally said to be named for its resemblance to a conical Chinese hat. The recipe wants two passes, a coarse sieve to break the vegetables down and the chinois to catch fibre. A blender or immersion blender before the chinois gets you there faster and with less loss.
- The pumpkinThree pounds is the weight before peeling and seeding, so expect roughly two pounds of flesh. A field pumpkin bred for carving is watery and bland; use a sugar pumpkin, kabocha or butternut.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. A little tarragon plus parsley approximates its anise note, or leave it out — it is a background flavour here, not the point.
- Cooking timeNinety minutes at a bare simmer suited a coal range and a whole-vegetable purée strained by hand. Cut small, the pumpkin is tender in 25 to 35 minutes; longer only dulls it.
- The milkAdd the hot milk and butter at the end as written and give it no more than the five minutes stated. Scalded milk in a sweetened, salted soup catches on the pan bottom quickly, so stir and keep the heat low.
- Liquid and yieldTwo quarts broth plus a quart of water is a great deal of liquid for three pounds of pumpkin — this is a thin, clear-flavoured potage, not a modern thick purée. It serves eight to ten. For a heavier soup, cut the water.
- SeasoningA tablespoon of sugar reads as a lot, but it is doing the work of correcting a bland pumpkin. Add half, taste after straining, and adjust; the salt likewise depends entirely on how the broth was made.
Pumpkin soup of this kind is French household cooking rather than American Thanksgiving fare — the leeks, celery, chervil and the finishing butter and milk are the standard framework of a potage, with the pumpkin simply standing in for whatever vegetable was cheap. The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its sensibility is that of a professional French kitchen setting down dishes from many countries for an American readership; the instruction to strain twice and serve croutons on a separate plate is restaurant service, not family supper. Pumpkins and other winter squashes are American in origin and had travelled to Europe by the sixteenth century, where they were absorbed into exactly this sort of everyday soup long before they became a seasonal specialty back home.