Princesse Cream

Source: Auguste Escoffier, 1907

History

Crème Princesse is a classical French cream soup codified by Auguste Escoffier in Le Guide Culinaire, first published in 1903. Our recipe text is Escoffier's own formula: equal parts of clear rice cream (crème de riz) and poultry cream (crème de volaille), lightened with cream (crémé) at the moment of service, and garnished with very small escalopes of poultry fillet, white asparagus tips, and chervil leaves.

The name follows the classical "à la princesse" garnish convention, which denotes a dish dressed with asparagus tips (with truffle, or with noisette potatoes); the soup's white asparagus tips are consistent with that convention. The name is a garnish nomenclature — it is not evidence that any princess created or ate the dish.

The formula was not fixed across editions. The first English translation (A Guide to Modern Cookery, 1907) prints the dish as "Crème de Volaille Princesse" (No. 713) built on a thin Béchamel with chicken purée, garnished with "very small slices of chicken fillets, white asparagus-heads, and chervil pluches"; the crème-de-riz-plus-crème-de-volaille version we archive corresponds to the formulation carried in later renderings of Le Guide Culinaire. Both are Escoffier's.

Escoffier codified dishes like this circa 1900 in the elite restaurant kitchens where he worked (the Savoy, Ritz, and Carlton of London and Paris), not in any royal or Ancien-Régime court. The historical record does not document who first made this soup, who ate it, or that it signaled wealth, class, or status.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Combine 8 decilitres of clear rice cream with 8 decilitres of finished poultry cream (crème de volaille). Just before serving, mount the cream to finish (crémer).
  2. Garnish with very small escalopes of poultry fillet, 2 spoonfuls of white asparagus tips, and chervil leaves.

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