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Puree, Conti
Soak a pint of dried lentils in cold water with quarter of a pint of dried green peas for one hour, drain, place them in a saucepan with a sliced carrot, a sliced onion. Tie in a bunch two leeks, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bean garlic and one bay leaf and add to the pan, with half pound lean salt pork cut in small pieces and a pint fresh crushed tomatoes. Moisten with three quarts water, season with two teaspoons salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly mix and let slowly boil for two hours. Remove from the fire, skim the fat from the surface of the soup, then press it through a sieve into a basin, then through Chinese strainer into soup tureen, and serve with a plate of croutons
A classic French lentil purée, written for a kitchen with a stockpot and a conical strainer. Two adjustments matter most: the salt and the sieving.
- Salt first, salt lastHalf a pound of lean salt pork plus two teaspoons of salt will read as very salty with modern cured pork. Add half the salt at the start and correct at the end, after the purée is strained and the pork's own salt has spread through three quarts of liquid.
- "One bean garlic"A single clove, tied into the bundle of herbs so it can be lifted out. The bundle itself is a bouquet garni; use kitchen twine and leave the leeks whole enough to pull free.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. A branch of flat-leaf parsley with a few fennel fronds or tarragon leaves gives the closest anise-tinged note; omitting it does no harm.
- SoakingThe hour of soaking is for the dried peas more than the lentils, which need none. Modern lentils will be soft in 45 minutes to an hour; the full two hours is about melding the soup and reducing it, not cooking the pulses through.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the fine conical sieve. Pressing first through a coarse sieve or food mill, then through the chinois, is what gives the velvety texture. A blender plus one pass through a fine sieve does the same work.
- Skim properlySalt pork and lentils throw a good deal of fat and scum. Skim before straining, and again after resting off the heat a few minutes, or the finished purée tastes greasy.
- ConsistencyThree quarts of water to a pint of lentils gives a thin purée by modern taste. Reduce further or hold back some liquid; the soup thickens noticeably as it cools.
- YieldAbout eight to ten servings as a first course. The recipe specifies only 'a plate of croutons'; croutons for soups of this kind were commonly fried in butter rather than toasted.
Purée Conti is one of the fixed names of the nineteenth-century French repertoire: in the classical kitchen a soup called Conti means lentils, just as Saint-Germain means green peas and Crécy means carrots. The name is generally traced to the princely house of Conti, a branch of the Bourbons, though as with most of these garnish names the connection is traditional rather than documented. Its appearance in an English-language cook book reflects how thoroughly the grand-hotel style of cooking ran on the French nomenclature — a reader was expected to recognize the name and know roughly what would arrive. The construction is pure economy dressed up: cheap pulses, a piece of salt pork for depth, aromatics lifted out in a bundle, and then the labor of two strainings, which is the only thing that separates this from a farmhouse lentil pottage.