Soup with Bouilli

History

"Soup with Bouilli" is Mary Randolph's version of an English table dish adapted from the French pot-au-feu. In England, "soup and bouilli" was a dish of boiled beef and root vegetables based on the French pot-au-feu; the name comes from the French custom of serving pot-au-feu as two courses — "la soupe et le bouilli" — with bouilli meaning the boiled meat itself. English printed references predate Randolph by decades: Tobias Smollett describes "some soup and bouillé" in The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), and Charlotte Mason's The Lady's Assistant (1773) carries a recipe for "Soup and Boullie". Randolph's recipe, printed in The Virginia House-Wife (first published 1824), keeps that two-part structure. About eight pounds of thick brisket is boiled some five hours with the vegetables and seasonings of her "other soup"; the beef is then lifted out, skinned, brushed with beaten egg yolk applied with a feather, coated with finely grated stale bread, and browned in a preheated Dutch oven with coals on the lid. It is plated with a gravy made from the reserved soup and its vegetables, red wine, mushroom catsup, and a thickening of butter and brown flour, garnished with sliced green pickle; the soup itself goes to the table separately in a tureen with bits of toasted bread. The Virginia House-Wife is generally considered the first regional American cookbook, blending European-influenced recipes with African, Native American, and other cooking traditions — soup and bouilli being one of its English-by-way-of-French inheritances. The historical record I was able to open does not document this dish as a marker of social status, wealth, or class in Tidewater Virginia; that claim is omitted because no source about this particular dish supports it.

Ingredients

• 8 pounds thick brisket of beef
• ingredients for other soup
• 1 egg yolk
• stale bread crumb
• soup and vegetables
• 1 tablespoon red wine
• 2 tablespoons mushroom catsup
• butter
• brown flour
• green pickle
• toasted bread

Instructions

1. Place the beef into a pot with all ingredients directed for the other soup and prepare it in the same manner, but start cooking it an hour earlier to allow time for the bouilli preparation.
2. Boil the beef for five hours. Remove it from the pot, cover the soup, and set it near the fire to keep hot.
3. Skin the beef. Beat the egg yolk well, dip a feather into it, and wash the top of the beef with it. Sprinkle the grated stale bread crumb over the top. Place the beef in a preheated Dutch oven, cover it with coals on top sufficient to brown but not burn the beef. Let it stand nearly an hour.
4. While the beef is browning, prepare the gravy: take a sufficient quantity of the soup and the vegetables boiled in it, add a tablespoon of red wine and two tablespoons of mushroom catsup. Thicken with a little butter and a little brown flour. Heat the gravy thoroughly.
5. Pour the hot gravy into a serving dish and place the beef on top. Garnish with thin slices of green pickle. Serve the soup in a tureen with bits of toasted bread.