SOUP, GLORIOUS SOUP

ON THE CHANGE OF SEASONS

La Soupe by Honore Daumier.

Last Monday, 24th October,  the month changed. Vendémiaire, the month of the wine harvest, the vendange, ended and we entered Brumaire, the month of mists.

That, at least, was what the revolution of 1789 planned for a new and rational calendar, one based not on ancient Rome and its gods but on the reality of a farmer’s life, and  with the months named accordingly.  

Like lots of good ideas, it didn’t survive, and its inventor, Fabre d’Eglantine, ended his life on the guillotine.  But the French are stubborn. Essentially rural people, they know better than anybody that, to everything, there is a season. So next weekend, it becomes officially Autumn in Europe – Fall to you Americans.  In accordance with the mnemonic “Spring forward, Fall back”,  on Sunday morning, while we sleep, time will slip a cog, and we’ll wake not in darkness but in time to watch the sun crawl above the eastern horizon behind Notre Dame, gilding its towers and the giant crane that hovers over the wounded building like a solicitous nurse.

For farmers, it’s already Autumn; has been since Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael and All the Angels, on September 29th. With the grapes picked, the harvest in and stored, there’s time to rest before hunkering down for winter. Traditionally. a goose is roasted and enjoyed with family and friends, and the pig that has got fat through the summer on kitchen scraps is ritually disassembled into pork for roasting and saucisse – sausage - for frying but, more important, into salted petit salé and saucisson – dry sausage- , both of which will hang in the rafters, next to the hams and flitches of bacon that will feed the family until spring.

Brumaire, season of the harvest, of “mists and mellow fruitfulness.”

In recognition of the change and as a small homage to Fabre and his vision of a different year, I made soup. (Well, all right - I probably would have made it anyway, but awareness of the season gave it a small frisson.)

I took the carcass of a chicken and its trimmings, left over from Saturday lunch, and put it the oven. While it roasted, I chopped an onion, a couple of leeks, some carrots and a few sticks of celery, peeled two cloves of garlic and put everything in my largest pot with a spoonful of salt, some black peppercorns, a bay leaf from the tree in the garden of our summer house, and some sprigs of thyme cut from the plant on our balcony. When the chicken bones had browned, I drained off the fat, added them to the vegetables with two litres of water, put the pot to simmer – and forgot about it.

Forgetting is the real art of making soup and time its most important ingredient.  When Henry IV said "I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday,"  he wasn’t talking about a young bird, spit-roasted and tender enough to be torn apart with the fingers. Only the rich and powerful could afford those. The chicken that went into a pot was that old hen which had laid her last egg and was fit for only one thing – soup. Over hours of simmering, her flesh deliquesced and her bones gave up their gelatine, contributing substance to the bouillon,  while the skin added its enriching fat.

A bowl of that soup could sustain a man for a day’s work in the fields and his wife for her hours of chores.  It could be stretched by floating some croutons of toasted bread, and by swilling out the dregs with a glass of wine, the custom known as chabrot which launched so many French boys on a life of drinking. You could strain it to make consomme as the appetizer to a larger meal,  add vegetables and smoked meats for a garbure,  pound fresh basil to create pistou or, like the fishermen of the Mediterranean, throw in their unsaleable fish for a bouillibaise. Soup could heal the sick and even, some said, bring back a drowned man from apparent death. Bouillon restored, and places that served it were sites of restoration – restaurants.

My soup cooled for a couple of hours, then sat overnight. The next morning, I strained off the bouillon , returned it to the pot to reduce by about half, then put it in the fridge until the fat congealed and I could remove most of it, leaving just enough for that golden glaze.

 I decanted some into a plastic bottle and froze it for later use. For lunch, I warmed a cup to accompany a ham and cheese sandwich. The next day, I sauteed some onions, added them to some soup with grated raw onion, floated a slice of baguette on top, covered it in cheese and grilled it for an authentic soupe à l’oignon. For dinner, I used it as the base of a …..  Well, you get the idea.

“I live on good soup,” Molière said, “not on fine words.”  

I think we need both.