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The Art of Cuisine
By Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Joyant, Margery Weiner Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1994 Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9235-4
CHAPTER 1
ABOUT CERTAIN SOUPS
DE QUELQUES SOUPES
BEARNAISE SOUP
GARBURE BEARNAISE
In a tall soup pot put three to four liters of water, the leaves of a small cabbage—except the outer leaves—some potatoes, leeks, a turnip, a carrot, an onion, a clove of garlic, all well washed and cut small.
Let it boil, and add a good handful of dried haricot beans which have soaked overnight, a red pepper, a sprig of thyme, a little white pepper. Barely salt. Let it simmer on a low fire for three hours.
Three quarters of an hour before the cooking is finished, add a piece of salt pork, preserved goose, or duck.
When you are ready to serve, set some pieces of toasted bread in a soup tureen, and pour over them the soup, which ought to be fairly thick. Serve the piece of pork and the preserve separately.
This soup should be so thick a spoon will stand in it, using 8 qts. water, 4 medium potatoes, ¼ cup dried pea beans.
BEEF BOUILLON FROM THE POT-AU-FEU
LE BOUILLON DU POT-AU-FEU
Choose about three or four pounds of the shoulder of a good piece of beef; or hindquarter, in the sirloin; also three pounds of short ribs or bottom round; also some marrow bones. Preferably have a large earthenware stewpot. First of all put in the pieces of shoulder or sirloin—meat on the lean side; add the cut-up bones, with their marrow wrapped in a white cloth; poultry giblets, cold water—a liter and a quarter to a pound of meat—and a handful of coarse salt. This is to make the basis of the bouillon. One may add a piece of salt pork.
Place the stewpot on the fire, let it cook gently and skim.
After it has boiled for three hours, add the pieces of short ribs or bottom round—fat and tender—which are intended to make up the dish of pot-au-feu. Add whole carrots and turnips, a large onion stuck with three cloves, a clove of garlic, a quarter of a white cabbage previously blanched, a laurel leaf, celery, chervil, a bouquet garni, a few white peppercorns, and a pinch of nutmeg. Green cabbage and leek are not suitable because of their taste, unless they are very young—in any case, blanch them before cooking.
Let the pot-au-feu cook for another two hours and more. Take out the meat and the vegetables, skim the bouillon, which is easy to do when it is boiling; taste it to add salt and spice at your will; pass through a fine sieve and pour it over toasted slices of bread laid in a soup tureen.
The pot-au-feu is used as a family meal as set out in the recipe for beef from the pot-au-feu.
5 cups of water for each lb. meat; 2 lbs. carrots and 2-3 turnips.
PISTOU SOUP
SOUPE AU PISTOU
In a marmite, an earthenware soup pot, put six peeled potatoes, a pound of fresh red and white beans, a zucchini (green squash) cut in pieces, a large whole white onion. Moisten with water to the height of the vegetables, about two liters; salt; no pepper or bouquet garni.
Let it boil until the vegetables become a purée. Before it has finished cooking, add two beautiful large whole tomatoes; after a minute, take them out, peel them and seed them. Then, in a mortar, pound some garlic with one good plant of basil; add the tomatoes, some grated Gruyère or Holland cheese—a good quarter of a pound for six people. Make a paste by adding two or three spoons of fine olive oil and throw it into the reduced liquid of the marmite, removed to the side of the fire. Stir for at least ten minutes, then add pepper at the last moment.
Pistou is the basil paste; it binds the soup. Keep thick; cook on very low heat or cheese will separate out. One quarter-pound dry pea beans soaked overnight may substitute for fresh.
ONION SOUP
SOUPE A L'OIGNON
In a saucepan or, preferably, an earthenware frying pan, melt a pound of butter; when it is creamy, put in a laurel leaf and six or seven beautiful sliced onions. Let them brown while working with a wooden spoon until the whole is a good russet color. Add two spoons of flour and stir well so that it all becomes golden. Dilute with four or five liters of water or, better still, bouillon. Add a bouquet garni, salt, pepper; let it simmer and reduce to about three liters.
This done, at the bottom of a sauté pan, a soup pot, or a terrine with straight sides and flat bottom which can go in the oven, put a bed of grated Gruyère cheese, then slices of stale toasted bread, previously fried in butter and nicely golden; cover again with a bed of grated cheese mixed with freshly ground white pepper.
Taste the soup to add salt and pepper as you wish—on guard to remember that certain Gruyères are salted—and pour it, well strained and pressed, over the croutons.
When, after a few minutes, the croutons have risen to the surface, taste the bouillon again to season or to add salt if necessary, then cover with a layer of grated cheese.
Some people cover with bread crumbs mixed with parsley but this is a mistake because bread crumbs and parsley give a taste of their own.
Put into a hot oven, let it brown, and serve boiling.
4 qts. water or beef stock.
ONION AND GARLIC SOUP
SOUPE A L'OIGNON ET A L'AIL
In a large earthenware soup pot put about eight pounds of good butter and brown a good dozen large onions chopped fine and as many cloves of garlic.
Stir continuously with a wooden spoon while adding as much good wheat flour as the butter can absorb.
Salt and pepper strongly; continue to work this mixture as long as possible since it must become a paste. Turn this paste into a pot or into a tinned box with a tight cover and let it get cold.
With this preparation one can, in the high mountains, make about thirty soups, allowing a large spoon of the mixture per hunter.
Pour the spoonfuls into a marmite in which there is boiling water from the glaciers or from the snow; let it boil for a few minutes, then soak the bread, previously toasted in front of the fire.
This soup is made to carry when hunters keep to the mountains for a fortnight or so, and in the evening to fortify people in a state of exhaustion, who are no longer hungry but only thirsty, and who sleep out of doors at altitudes of three thousand meters.
BORDELAISE FISH SOUP
BOURRIDE BORDELAISE
In a large marmite make a light-colored roux in which you wilt fines herbes, parsley, water cress, fennel, chopped lemon, laurel, thyme.
Put in five pounds of common sea fish, with the heads, cut in pieces: black conger, hake, whiting, homelyn ray (cuckoo ray), red mullet, plaice, flounder, weever fish, angler fish, red gurnet, stockfish. Add salt, white and aromatic peppercorns, saffron, cloves and red cayenne pepper.
Moisten with water to the height of the fish and let it boil until the fish fall completely apart.
In the meantime, in this bouillon you will have cooked, and removed from the pot, a whole choice fish which is to be eaten: turbot, sole, brill, sea bass, haddock.
When the bouillon is reduced, throw in the following paste made separately:
In a marble mortar crush five or six cloves of garlic; add salt, an egg yolk, and, little by little, two or three deciliters of oil, stirring continuously with the pestle to have a paste of the same kind as mayonnaise.
Let the fish bouillon simmer for another good quarter of an hour, then strain it and pour it into a deep dish over some toasted croutons. Serve boiling hot to go with the choice fish which should be eaten at the same time, like the beef from the pot-au-feu.
Roux:3 Tbs. butter, 2 Tbs. flour with ¾ cup mixed, chopped, fresh herbs. Cook common fish (later thrown out) 3 hrs., place whole fish (to eat) on top; poach till done; remove; cook stock 1 hr. more; thicken with paste made with ¾ cup oil.
SPANISH SOUP
BOUILLON D'ESPAGNE
For a liter of consommé: put four liters of cold water in a stewpot made of earthenware, some salt, two spoons of lentils, a spoon of split peas, and a spoon of white haricot beans.
When the water boils, add a large leek cut in pieces, a hundred grams of carrots and a hundred grams of thinly sliced turnips, half a stick of celery, a piece of thistle, parsnip, and a lettuce cut in pieces.
Let it boil without a lid; then, with a lid; let it reduce on a low fire until one liter of consommé remains from the four liters of water.
Strain and serve hot.
This soup is excellent for intestinal inflammation and diarrhea and has the same properties as milk.
If one wants to eat it, without being ill, add pepper, salt, and a binding of butter with egg yolk and fried croutons.
FISH SOUP
SOUPE A POISSONS
In a large saucepan put leeks, tomatoes, and cut fennel, two laurel leaves, a few cloves, and some good olive oil. Brown.
Add some Mediterranean fish cut in pieces: rascasse, rock fish, hake, bass, head of conger eel—and let them brown lightly.
Moisten with water and let boil until the fish fall completely apart. Add saffron; strain the soup pressing some of the fish through. Cook some pasta in the stock and serve, adding salt to taste.
Rich, strained, fish broth—3 leeks, 4 tomatoes, a fennel, ¼ cup olive oil, 2 lbs. cheap fish or 3 lbs. heads and bones. Cook 5 min. after adding enough saffron to turn soup golden.
MULLIGATAWNY SOUP
MULLIGATAWNY SOUPE
In a saucepan put a quarter pound of butter and twelve sliced onions and let them cook until they are brown.
Add twelve potatoes boiled to a pulp in water, one hundred seventy-five grams of flour, two large spoons of curry powder, two of curry paste, and three liters of very good bouillon.
Let it boil for an hour, skim the fat, add very small pieces of cold roast chicken. Serve boiling hot.
About 1¼ qts. water for the potatoes—add more if needed. ¾ cup flour, 2 Tbs. curry powder, 2 tsp. curry paste, ¼ lb. butter. Use 12 cups chicken bouillon and combine gradually, cold, with flour, before heating.
CHAPTER 2
THE RAINBOW OF SAUCES
L'ARC-EN-CIEL DES SAUCES
WHITE SAUCE CALLED A LA POULETTE
SAUCE BLANCHE DITE A LA POULETTE
Put into a saucepan a good lump of butter and three hundred grams of a white coulis (made with veal, ham, onions, shallots, spices; reduced and moistened with bouillon, with four crushed hard-boiled yolks of eggs, with cream; the whole cooked and strained) or, in its absence, some very good bouillon. Bind with three yolks of eggs, add a pinch of scalded parsley, half a pound of mushrooms previously sautéed in butter, a quarter of good cream and let it heat. At the last moment add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste, and throw sheep's trotters or other meats into this sauce.
Very rich. Use 3 Tbs. butter, 1½ cups of bouillon or coulis cooked for ½ hour as follows: strong cooking juice of 1 lb. meat, 2 onions, 3 shallots, all chopped and cooked with 4 egg yolks, 2 cups bouillon, ¼ cup cream, and 1 to 2 Tbs. lemon juice. Combine butter and coulis or bouillon with yolks, etc., and 1 cup heavy cream.
PIQUANT WHITE SAUCE
SAUCE BLANCHE PIQUANTE
Cook gently in butter two onions, fines herbes, two cloves of garlic, tarragon, savory, laurel. Sprinkle with flour; moisten with a good white wine, a dash of vinegar, and fish stock. Add salt, pepper, spices to taste, lemon juice. Skim the fat and strain the sauce before serving with a pike.
Spice this sauce highly. Base it on 2 Tbs. butter, 1 Tbs. flour, ¾ cup wine and ¾ cup stock.
WHITE SAUCE, CALLED BECHAMEL
SAUCE BLANCHE DITE BECHAMEL
In a saucepan put butter and two spoons of flour; make a very lightcolored roux; moisten with milk and work until it thickens to your liking; season to taste with salt, ordinary and aromatic pepper.
2 Tbs. butter, 2 Tbs. flour, and 1½ to 2½ cups milk, according to thickness desired.
WHITE SAUCE FOR ASPARAGUS
SAUCE BLANCHE POUR LES ASPERGES
Into a saucepan put butter and two spoons of flour; make a very light-colored roux; moisten with the water in which the asparagus were cooked and, at the end, add a large glass of good cream; season well with salt and pepper.
2 Tbs. butter, 1½ cups asparagus water, 1½ cups heavy cream.
YELLOW SAUCE CALLED "MAYONNAISE"
SAUCE JAUNE DITE MAYONNAISE
Put into a mortar one or two raw yolks of egg; salt; pepper; add a dash of vinegar and mustard; pour in fine olive oil, drop by drop, while stirring all the time in the same direction with a wooden spoon.
The sauce should "take" and become a paste. Continue until you have as much sauce as you want. Salt; pepper; add a little chopped parsley.
¾ cup oil per egg yolk.
YELLOW SAUCE CALLED AIOLI OR MAYONNAISE WITH GARLIC
SAUCE JAUNE DITE AIOLI OU MAYONNAISE A L'AIL
Put into a mortar one or two raw yolks of eggs, three or four cloves of garlic—previously crushed in a napkin and then pounded to a paste—salt; pepper; a dash of vinegar or lemon juice; pour in, drop by drop, some fine olive oil, stirring with a wooden spoon always in the same direction.
The sauce should become the consistency of a paste.
Serve the aioli—the supreme Marseillais dish—with Icelandic salt cod, well desalted and boiled, with angler fish, with Mediterranean whiting—that is to say, hake—with brown snails or country snails (helix aspersa) or mourguettes—the local name for the white snails of the French South with black markings—cooked and seasoned, with mussels cooked in their own liquor, with pike and perch cooked in a court bouillon, with hard-boiled eggs, with potatoes, boiled or steamed, with young boiled carrots or cauliflower, with artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, French beans, or asparagus and leeks.
¾ cup oil per egg yolk. A garlic press and a whip facilitate success.
YELLOW SAUCE
SAUCE JAUNE
In a saucepan put six to eight raw egg yolks; mix them with a piece of butter as large as an egg, using a wooden spoon gently in a double boiler.
Go on working without stopping until you have firm paste. Take the saucepan off the stove, add yet another egg-sized piece of butter, let it melt gently while continuing to stir. Add a good handful of chopped tarragon and a spoon of good wine vinegar and let it thicken.
Taste, add salt, and heighten the flavor with freshly ground pepper to taste.
Serve with all meats roasted over a fire of wood—kid, young goat, mutton, venison, etc.
About ¼ cup butter for each egg-sized piece, ¼ cup fresh tarragon or soak 1 tsp. dry tarragon in white wine vinegar ½ hr.
YELLOW SAUCE CALLED "MAITRE D'HOTEL"
SAUCE JAUNE DITE MAITRE D'HOTEL
Put in a saucepan a good quarter of butter, some chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Work and add to taste the juice of a lemon.
¼ lb. butter; barely heat to mix with juice; let cool.
YELLOW SAUCE
SAUCE JAUNE
Put in a saucepan three spoons of good wine vinegar with pepper, salt, laurel, thyme, spices, and let it reduce by more than half.
In a saucepan put a trace of warm water, add a bit of water to one or two egg yolks, butter or, if this is lacking, oil, the reduced vinegar, chopped tarragon, salt, and pepper. Work it well by stirring over a gentle heat or in a double boiler.
This is sauce béarnaise: careful—½ cup butter per yolk, a bit at a time; 2 Tbs. fresh tarragon.
YELLOW SAUCE MOUSSELINE
SAUCE JAUNE MOUSSELINE
Put in a saucepan in a double boiler the yolks of four eggs; work them for two or three minutes. Melt separately one hundred to one hundred and fifty grams of butter and pour it warm over the eggs. Then, little by little, add slowly a quarter of a liter of cream. Go on working the sauce without stopping and it should thicken. When the sauce is sufficiently thick, add, at the end: salt, pepper, and, according to taste, nutmeg or cayenne pepper.
This sauce works. It may seem to separate at the end, or when reheating. To correct: remove from heat, beat hard with wire whisk. Use 2/3 cup butter, 1 cup heavy cream.
DARK ORANGE YELLOW CURRY SAUCE
SAUCE JAUNE ORANGE FONCE CURRY
Put into a saucepan sixty grams of butter, a finely chopped onion, a bouquet of parsley on the stem, thirty grams of raw ham chopped into very fine pieces. Let it cook gently until the onion has dissolved.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Art of Cuisine by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Joyant, Margery Weiner. Copyright © 1994 Henry Holt and Company, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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