An Exaltation of Soups (19 page)

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

4 cups milk

2 tablespoons grated onion

2 teaspoons concentrated vegetable or chicken base, or crushed

bouillon cubes

2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground white pepper

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

½ pound backfin crab meat, with any shells removed

1 tablespoon Cognac

Tiny pinches of grated nutmeg, for garnish

C
RABBY
D
ELIGHTS

Besides being tasty, crab meat is considered an aphrodisiac, possibly because its own history shows it to be eminently successful in the amatory arts. Having evolved during the Jurassic period, along with all those dinosaurs, the crab not only survived the period but multiplied into some 4,500 different species. Some scuttle sideways; some swim; some walk on land.

The ancients, though, set it in the skies: the Cancer constellation. Who put it there? First the Babylonians, who just noted it. Then the Greeks, who lifted it to stardom, giving it a bit role in Hercules’ ninth labor, when he fights and defeats the nine-headed Hydra. Here’s the story: Hera, queen of the gods and eternal hater of this illegitimate son of hubby Zeus, sent a Giant Crab out of the Lerna swamp to pinch Hercules’ toes and distract him from the task at hand. Didn’t faze him. Hercules smooshed that crab flat with his foot, without even a courtesy glance. Hera felt bad about the Crab’s quick end and, to make up for it, gave it immortality by placing it in the heavens as the Cancer constellation. Or so Ptolemy’s
Almagest
in the second century
A.D.
says. But modern astronomers generally think that, because it’s such a dim and poorly defined constellation, ancient astrologers fudged—just made the whole story up so they could round out the heavenly map using the Hercules myth to score the twelves signs of the Zodiac.

T
RUTH IN
L
AST
R
ITES

An Irish nobleman, on his deathbed, summoned his heir to his bedside and told him he had a secret to communicate that might prove some compensation for the dilapidated condition of the family property. It was that crab sauce is better than lobster sauce.

—A
BRAHAM
H
AYWARD
,
T
HE
A
RT OF
D
INING
, 1852

S
TRAWBERRIES

This member of the rose family is not a true berry at all, since it carries its tiny seeds on the outside of its flesh instead of within its tissue—and it’s old, very old. So old that it’s native to both the Old and New Worlds, meaning it had already evolved, like the walnut, when these continents were attached during Earth’s early history. Its English name probably derives from the way it grows—originally called
strewberry
because of the way it’s “strewn” over the ground; its Latin genus,
Fragaria
, is from its heady fragrance.

Strawberries didn’t taste all that great in their wild state, though Romans—those omnivores—were said to relish them. Cultivation began in the fourteenth century in Europe and almost immediately captured the imagination of artistic monks, when the French king Charles V had some 12,000 strawberry plants set out in his Royal Gardens in 1386. It was a short artistic walk in the monastery for the strawberry to ramble from being a decorative element in religious paintings to becoming a rosy symbol for the Virgin Mary herself.

Strawberry lusciousness got a big upgrade in the seventeenth century, when the New World
Fragaria virginiana
was brought into the mix to create the modern strawberry. Of this New World varietal—a favorite of Native Americans that was first catalogued in Massachusetts in 1621—one colonist in Maryland wrote, “We cannot set down a foot but we tread on strawberries.”

3 cups halved strawberries

¾ cup sugar

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon finely grated orange zest

¼ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

1 tablespoon Grand Marnier liqueur or orange juice

3 cups plain yogurt

G
ARNISH

1 cup halved strawberries

¼ cup sugar

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

N
OT
P
REJUDICE, BUT
G
OOD
S
ENSE

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.”

—S
IR
I
ZAAK
W
ALTON
,
T
HE
C
OMPLEAT
A
NGLER
, 1653

T
ARRAGON, FROM THE
S
TEPPES OF
C
ENTRAL
A
SIA

No, really.
Fines herbes
and
haute cuisine
notwithstanding, this baby started life in Siberia and didn’t make it to Europe over ancient trade routes until medieval times—a sad thing for ancient Greeks and Romans. Its name is a corruption of the French
estragon
, or “little dragon,” in turn a corruption of the Arabic
tarkhun.
Perhaps its dragonish name derived from its reputation for curing the bites and stings of reptiles, venomous insects, and mad dogs, but if you saw its tortuous, coiled roots you might also see the resemblance to depictions of the deadly firebreathing “worm” that battled Saint George.

Tarragon was finally imported to England in the fifteenth century, but grown exclusively in the Royal Gardens. A hundred years later it found its way into English kitchens as a culinary herb, but it wasn’t introduced to the New World until the nineteenth century.

5 cups rich Chicken Stock, preferably homemade and clarified; if you make it with chicken feet, it will be naturally gelatinous and you can forgo the gelatin and water below

1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin (usually sold in 1-tablespoon envelopes)

¼ cup cold water

4 teaspoons minced fresh tarragon or 1 teaspoon dried, crumbled, and hydrated in a little warm water for 15 minutes

1 teaspoon seafood seasoning (such as Old Bay)

¼ pound raw, unpeeled shrimp

Lettuce leaves (Bibb or other butterhead lettuce is nice)

G
ARNISH

Fresh parsley

1 large lemon