Creme Ferneuse
(Paris.) Peel and shred 4 large onions, 2 leeks, a bunch of herbs, 2 ounces ham or bacon, and fry in 2 ounces butter. Add 2 ounces boiled rice, 1 quart milk, and 1 quart of veal stock. Cook 20 minutes, add 1 piece of celery, 4 peeled and sliced potatoes, the same amount of turnips, and simmer 1 1/2 hours. Add 1 cup of boiling clam or oyster juice, salt, and pepper. Press through a sieve and serve at once.
A rich vegetable purée thickened with rice rather than flour, in the French style of the period. Two things need attention before you start: the long simmer is happening in milk, and the finish is a shellfish liquor.
- Milk scorchesA quart of milk held at a simmer for an hour and a half will catch on the bottom of the pan and taste burnt through the whole soup. Use a heavy-bottomed pot over the lowest steady heat, stir up from the base regularly, or hold back most of the milk and add it in the last twenty minutes with the stock carrying the long cooking.
- Cut the simmerSliced potatoes and turnips are soft in 25 to 30 minutes. There is little to gain from the full 1 1/2 hours now beyond a greyer colour and a scorched pan.
- "A bunch of herbs"A bouquet garni: parsley stalks, a bay leaf and a sprig of thyme tied together, or bundled in a leek leaf. Pull it out before sieving.
- "The same amount of turnips"Read this as an equal weight to the potatoes, roughly four medium turnips peeled and sliced; it may equally mean simply four turnips. White turnips can be sharp, so taste before committing to the full quantity.
- Veal stockUnsalted homemade veal or a light chicken stock both work. Avoid a dark brown stock, which will muddy the pale colour proper to a crème.
- The clam or oyster juiceThis is the finishing note and it goes in right at the end, as written (the recipe calls for it boiling). Bottled clam juice is heavily salted, so season only after it is stirred in. If you shuck oysters yourself, strain the liquor through muslin for grit.
- SievingA blender or stick blender does the work in seconds, but pass the purée afterwards anyway; onion and leek fibre does not break down and will show as threads.
- YieldTwo quarts of liquid plus vegetables gives roughly eight generous cups, six to eight servings as a first course. It thickens noticeably as it stands, so loosen with hot stock or milk when reheating.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea (Adelaide Keen, 1902) collected dishes the author gathered on the Continent and labelled by city, and the "(Paris.)" tag here is doing the work of an authority citation. The name points to potage Freneuse, a standard classical French preparation — a purée of turnip and potato — whose vegetables match this recipe exactly. The construction is textbook classical French: aromatics sweated in butter with a scrap of cured pork, rice as the thickener in place of a roux, everything driven through a sieve into a smooth purée. The last step is a cup of clam or oyster liquor stirred in at the end, adding a savour that no amount of simmering would supply.