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Puree Crecy, Stanley
Scrape, wash and drain eighteen small new carrots, finely slice and place in a saucepan with two sliced onions and four sliced branches celery. Add one ounce butter, set the pan on the fire and constantly stir with a wooden spoon for ten minutes, add two ounces raw rice, moisten with two quarts broth and season with teaspoon salt, teaspoon sugar and half teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan and let slowly boil for fifty minutes, strain the broth through a sieve into a basin, place the vegetables on strainer in a mortar and pound to a puree, then add it to the broth, sharply mix with a whisk, strain the soup through Chinese strainer into a saucepan, add half pint cooked fresh peas. Let come to a boil, add a half ounce butter, mix well, then pour into a soup tureen and serve.
A classic French carrot puree soup, thickened with rice rather than flour or cream. The method is straightforward once the archaic equipment is translated.
- The sweat is the flavourThe ten minutes of constant stirring in butter over gentle heat is what gives the soup its depth. Keep the heat low enough that nothing colours — you want the carrots and onions softened and sweet, not browned, or the finished puree turns muddy rather than orange.
- Mortar and Chinese strainerA blender or food processor does the pounding in seconds; return the puree to the broth and blitz again if you want it very smooth. The "Chinese strainer" is a chinois, a fine conical sieve — any fine-mesh strainer works, pressed through with a ladle.
- Rice as thickenerTwo ounces is about a third of a cup of raw long-grain or short-grain white rice. It cooks to nothing and disappears into the puree; do not use parboiled or instant rice, which will not break down.
- BrothThe book says only 'broth'; a light chicken or veal stock suits. Unsalted or low-sodium stock is safer here, since the recipe adds a full teaspoon of salt of its own.
- Fifty minutes is longer than you needWith modern thin-sliced vegetables and a covered pan, the carrots and rice are fully soft in 30 to 35 minutes. Longer simmering dulls the fresh carrot flavour and darkens the colour.
- The peas go in at the endHalf a pint is about a cup of cooked peas, added whole to the strained soup for texture and colour. Frozen peas need only a minute in the hot soup; boiling them further turns them grey.
- Finishing butterThe half ounce is one tablespoon, added after the soup comes to a boil. Swirl it in rather than whisk hard, so it emulsifies and gives gloss.
- YieldTwo quarts of broth plus vegetables makes roughly eight first-course servings. It reheats well but the peas soften; hold them back if you plan to keep some.
Purée Crécy is one of the fixed points of the French classical repertoire: in professional kitchen shorthand, "Crécy" on a menu means carrots, whether in a soup, a garnish or an omelette. The name is generally traced to Crécy in northern France, long reputed for the quality of its carrots, though which Crécy is meant has been argued over for well over a century. The version here follows the standard restaurant formula — vegetables sweated in butter, moistened with broth, bound with rice rather than cream, then passed through the chinois. Rice was one of several ways to give a vegetable soup body without dairy.