Soup (meal opener)
Potage Crécy
EverydayReconstruction🍯 🧂facile45 min
A carrot velouté thickened with rice, a beautiful orange-yellow, naturally sweet and finished with a knob of butter. The classic of classics of 19th-century home cooking, which opened the meal without fuss.
Why this dish? Bizet led the life of a hardworking Parisian bourgeois, hunched over his upright piano for hours. A carrot soup, sweet and nourishing, was the ordinary evening dish for a household like his: economical, comforting, ready to simmer while you worked on a score.
You see, when you've spent the day scribbling quavers that refuse to sing, nothing consoles like a good soup. My wife would pass it through a sieve until it was as smooth as a legato — not a single lump, if you please! You throw in a handful of rice to bind it, a fine knob of fresh butter to finish, and you finally sit down with a peaceful mind. It's modest, I grant you, but believe me, a man who has dined well composes better.
Ingredients
- •Carrots — a good bunch (sweet base of the soup)
- •Rice — a handful (thickener)
- •Fresh butter — a knob (richness and sheen)
- •Pot-au-feu broth — to cover (soup base)
- •Salt, sugar — to taste (seasoning)
How it was made : In the 19th century, soups were thickened with rice, tapioca, or bread crusts rather than cream, and they were always passed through a horsehair sieve: a perfect velouté was the mark of a good household. The broth often came from yesterday's *pot-au-feu* — nothing went to waste.