Potato or Parmentier Soup

Ingredients

• ten large potatoes
• the crumb of a French roll
• two leeks
• a head of celery
• a pint of milk
• a third of a pint of double cream
• a pat of fresh butter
• a little nutmeg
• a pinch of sugar

Method

1. 1

   Slice and blanch potatoes, stew in stock with leeks and celery.

2. 2

   When tender, remove herbs and rub through a tammy.

3. 3

   Mix with stock, clarify, add sugar and nutmeg.

4. 4

   Just before serving, mix in milk, cream, and butter.

5. 5

   Serve with blanched chervil and fried crusts.

Nutrition per serving

Estimated from matched ingredients across 4 servings.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The thorough good cook (1895) by George Augustus Sala, page 59. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

otato or Parmeiitier Soup. I have given an alternative " fancy " title to this excellent pottage in remembrance of the philanthropist Avho Avas the first to introduce the potato into French cooker}^ Parmentier Avas a military apothecary, Avho, late in the last centur}-, had learnt to believe in the dietetic value of the potato Avhile 86 THE THOnOUGII GOOD COOK. serving with the French armies in Germany. At the outset he had to encoimter the bitterest opjDosition both from the French Academy of Sciences and the French clergy. The first decLared the tuber to be poisonous ; the latter denounced it as a " Protestant " vegetable. Parmentier, however, suc- ceeded in obtaining the support of Benjamin Franklin and pf Lavoisier ; but his triumph was completed when he induced Marie Antoinette to accept and wear in her bosom a bouquet of potato flowers. "La Liberte et les Patatas" — "Liberty and Potatoes " — was a popular cry in Paris in the early days of the French Revolution ; and the strip of ornamental garden of the Palace of the Tuileries was planted Avith seed potatoes. Slice ten large potatoes (kidneys are the best), blanch them ; stew them in stock with two leeks and a head of celery tied up, and the crumb of a French roll ; when they break under the pressure of the finger, take out the bunch of herbs, and rub the potatoes through a tammy ; mix with a sufiicient quantity of stock, clarify the whole, add a pinch of sugar and a little nutmeg. When serving, just after boiling point, mix in a pint of milk — nursery milk if you can get it and if you can afford it — a third of a pint of double cream and a pat of fresh butter

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.