Soup a la Julienne May 1860

Soup a la Julienne - May 1860

For my birthday this year,  Nicolas purchased a copy of May 1860 to April 1861 Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine. As you can imagine I was excited to begin reading and cooking now that Nicolas had finished installing my wood oven. 

There was a delay in beginning as I found that I needed to grow some French herbs. The first recipe from May is Soup a la Julienne. This recipe is 160 years old this month. 

To preserve the book,  I transcribed the recipe onto recipe cards. 

Ingredients-

1/2 pint or 1 cup of carrot

1/2 pint or 1 cup of turnip

1/4 pint or 1/2 cup of onions

2-3 leeks

1 head of celery

1 lettuce

A little sorrel and chervil

2oz or 57g of butter

2 quarts or 1.9 litres of stock

Method-

Cut carrots, turnips, leeks, onion and celery into very thin strips of 1 1/4 inches long or just over 3cms in length.  Be particular they are all the same size, or some will be hard whilst others will be done to a pulp. (Keep the carrot separate.)  Cut the lettuce,  chervil and sorrel into larger pieces.

Fry the carrots in the butter,  and pour the stock boiling to them. When this is done,  add all the other vegetables, and herbs, and stew gently for at least an hour. 

Skim off all the fat, pour the soup over thin slices of bread, cut round about the size of a shilling and serve. 

(mine were a tad larger than my shilling. We also decided to serve our soup on soup plates made by Copland Spode in the Itallian pattern dated from 1816 to 20th century)

Summary- this is a delicious vegetable soup that requires a skillful hand with a knife.  Well worth the effort.