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Puree of Lentils
In six cups of cold water cook a quart of lentils, a slice of lean ham, the skeleton of a roast chicken or other fowl and half dozen roots of celery. Strain the broth into a saucepan, rub the lentils through a sieve, add them to the broth, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour cooked together, let simmer five minutes, season and serve. A simpler puree of lentils may be made by cooking the lentils in salted water, rubbing them through a sieve, mixing them with the water in which they were cooked, and then thickening the mixture with butter and flour. A cup of sweet cream may be added, if liked, just before the puree is taken from the fire.
A French-style potage built on a roast-chicken carcass, written for cooks who assumed sieves and leftover bones were always to hand. Two adjustments matter most: the liquid, and the fact that no cooking time is given.
- The liquid is shortA quart of dry lentils is roughly 1¾–2 lb, and six cups of water will not cover it once the lentils swell to two or three times their volume. Start with at least 3 quarts and top up as needed; you can always reduce the strained broth.
- No time is givenBrown or green lentils need 30–40 minutes at a bare simmer to go soft enough to sieve; older, drier lentils longer. Red lentils collapse in about 20 minutes and need no sieving at all, though they give a paler, sweeter purée.
- "Half dozen roots of celery"Genuinely ambiguous. It may mean the root ends and coarse lower stalks of celery, the trimmings a kitchen kept for stock; it may equally mean celeriac. Six stalks with their bases, or one small celeriac peeled and quartered, both work.
- Rubbing through a sieveA food mill on the medium plate does this in a minute and keeps the skins back. A blender is faster but incorporates air and gives a slightly gluey texture with pulses, so pulse briefly rather than running it smooth.
- The rouxCook the tablespoon of butter and two of flour together over low heat for two or three minutes until it smells nutty but takes no colour, then whisk the hot purée into it. Added the other way round the flour lumps.
- Salt lastThe ham slice and the carcass both season the broth unpredictably. Taste only after the roux has gone in and the five minutes' simmer is done.
- Strain with carePoultry bones splinter in long cooking. Pour the broth through a fine sieve or cloth rather than fishing the skeleton out, and check the pot before the lentils go back in.
- YieldThis makes a large quantity. As written the liquid is only six cups, but with the extra water suggested above the finished soup comes to something like 3 quarts, enough for ten or more as a first course. Halving it is straightforward.
- The creamOff the heat, or at most below a simmer. The purée is already thickened with flour, and boiling cream into it after the roux tends to break the surface into flecks.
Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods of the Near East, but their appearance in an American cook book of this period owes less to antiquity than to the French kitchen: puree soups, thickened with a sieved pulse and finished with a butter-and-flour roux, were a standing category in the classical repertoire and were widely taken up by English-language household manuals in the later nineteenth century. The instruction to use "the skeleton of a roast chicken or other fowl" places the recipe in a thrift tradition as well -- the carcass is doing the work of a veal stock, and the slice of lean ham the work of a bacon rind. Note that the book offers two versions, an elaborate one and a "simpler" one made with nothing but lentils, their cooking water, butter and flour.