Like everyone else brought up in France, I was raised on soup. We ate it at any meal and at any time. And like so many of my countrymen, I find myself perfectly content to make a whole meal just of soup. The fact is, my first real attempts at cooking were with soup, and that goes back many years before I ever thought about training to be a chef. In our home, as in all the homes in my part of France, and in other sections, too, soup was the daily breakfast food. Dig bowls of nourishing soup corresponded to the hot cereal and milk served in American homes. And what better send-off for youngsters who had to trudge to school along a mile or more of snowy road before eight o'clock on dark winter mornings? The luxury of a school bus was unknown to us.
I always used to like to help my mother prepare the morning soup, getting out the butter from the big crock. chopping the potatoes, handing her the milk, and so on, until I knew every step by heart. I was only about eight or nine years old when I begged to be allowed to take a turn at doing it all by myself, and soon my daily pot of heartening potage was as tasty as any family could ask for. And I could tackle my home-work while it cooked. In those days my repertoire was limited to two kinds. The favorite one, leek and potato soup, is well known to most Americans. The other, turnip soup, is less familiar. It was made of white turnips, les raves, but a variety that I have never wen in this country. They grow to maturity in only a few weeks and this makes them extremely soft and tender and very delicate in flavor. In no time at all they will boil away to a fine purée which both thickens and flavors the soup. Butter and cream were then added to finish and enrich it, and the result was delicious.
Of course, when I went in training to be a Chef, I learned all the professional tricks about making soups. I had plenty of opportunities to put them to good use, too, because when I went to work as potager at the Paris Ritz, I soon found out that Mr. Elles, the manager, was both a gourmet of note and a soup-fancier as well. He insisted that soup. coming as it does, at the beginning. establishes the mood of a meal and believed that the meal as a whole inevitably suffers if the soup is anything short of perfect. He himself seldom ate anything but soup for his evening meal, and I hardly need add that it had to be at the very peak of excellence. In order to please him, I worked very hard to become the best potager in Paris.
Whole books, of course, have been written on the subject of soup. I'm only going to pass along to you here a few of the tricks I've learned about making those of the potage type, that is, thick ones like cream soups and purées. But, first, I'd like to mention a French eating custom that has to do with eating clear soups like consomme and beef broth. It is a cold-weather trick that I learned as a young man and one to try when you come in from the cold and are chilled to the bone. Pour a glass of red wine into a bowl of boiling hot clear soup. I've done this all my life and have yet to 6nd anything that gives as warm and glowing a feeling as it does. I'd like also to suggest to anyone planning a visit to France to seek out the special soups because some of them are found nowhere else—like the one made with raves. Another is a pea soup in which the pods as well as the seeds are cooked for the purée. The peas are a special variety. however, that grow with very small. juicy pods, something like green beans. We call them petits pois mange-tout—little peas all of which are eaten. I've never seen them in this country.
Cream soups and those made with vegetable purées can be divided into three main groups. The first group of potages like chicken, spinach, corn, lettuce, mushroom, tomato, and the shellfish bisques are made of a base of chicken stock thickened with rice or barley. This was something to reckon with when I was a young chef, because after cooking the rice or barley with whatever foodstuff we were using. we had to pound and grind the mixture in a huge mortar whose heavy wooden pestle swung from a support in the ceiling. It took plenty of muscle to push and pull that pestle and grind up the rice with crayfish or lobster shells, for example, in order to follow the formulas we then used for making the bisques. Today one can buy cream of rice or barley, a finely ground flour, to mix with the stock. But there are some of the delicate soups like crème Crécy, cream of Carrot, in which I still prefer to use the whole rice. In this case, the vegetable and the rice can be cooked together until soft and easily rubbed through a sieve or food mill and then, if desired. strained through a fine sieve.
The second group of potages are made on a base of potage Parmentier, that is, leek and potato purée. They include cream of water cress, cream of sorrel. bonne femme, vichyssoise, and others which are improved by the texture of potatoes and enhanced by the flavor combination of leeks and potatoes.
Finally, there are the potages which use potage St. Germain for the base, that is, a purée made of peas, dried or fresh, or a combination of the two, or on a base made of bean purée. In this group are potage Longchamps, fontange, Chantilly, and mongole. A dried bean purée is used for crème soissonnaise, black bean soup, and minestrone; and a purée of lentils is used for many soups made with the bones of game.
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