Soup À La Reine

Ingredients

• 1 large bird chicken
• 30 g sweet almonds
• 1.5 rolls French roll crumb
• 300 ml cream
• to taste salt
• 1 small lump sugar
• 1200 ml white veal stock

Method

Soup à la Reine depends on a stock-based emulsion thickened with a fine forcemeat: the chicken and almonds must be pounded to a paste fine enough that they integrate seamlessly into the liquid rather than settling as grits. Poach the whole chicken in the white veal stock at a bare simmer — the surface should barely tremble — for 1 to 1.5 hours until the thigh meat yields immediately to a fork and the breast is opaque throughout. This slow poaching keeps the meat tender and flavours the stock in return.

Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, pick every scrap of meat from the carcass and discard the skin and sinew. Work the meat in a mortar with the blanched sweet almonds, grinding methodically until you have a fine, pale paste with no visible fibres or almond fragments remaining — this takes patience, but the texture of the finished soup depends on it. The almonds contain dairy|fat and protein that will bind the mixture and create the soup's characteristic silkiness when emulsified into the hot stock.

Strain the poaching stock through a fine sieve and return it to the pot. Add the chicken-and-almond paste a spoonful at a time, stirring constantly to prevent lumps forming; the heat must remain below a simmer during this stage or the proteins will seize. Once fully incorporated, add the French roll crumb — dried bread that acts as a secondary thickener — and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Pass the entire soup through a fine sieve, pressing the solids against the mesh with the back of a spoon to extract maximum flavour and body. You should have a smooth, ivory-coloured liquid with no graininess.

Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold it in off the heat, then warm the soup in a bain-marie — a bowl nestled in simmering water — rather than over direct flame. The bain-marie prevents the cream from breaking and keeps the soup at serving temperature without further cooking the egg proteins in the forcemeat.

Serve with small bread rounds toasted and placed in the bowl just before pouring the hot soup over them, or omit the bread altogether if you prefer the soup's body to stand alone.