FISH AND VEGETABLE CONSOMMÉS:—For these, please see Chapters IX. and V. respectively.
The modern PTITIE MARMITE of the restaurants is only an ingenious adaptation of the excellent old soup :—croûtes-au-pot, which in turn was merely our pot-au-feu served with some of its vegetables, a few leaves of cabbage separately cooked, and a croûte for each basin—a leguminous beef broth, that is to say, with a crispened round of a French roll as additional garnish.
The new idea is to serve this soup to you, for effect, in a little earthenware marmite (stock-pot) with a napkin pinned round it, and in addition to the croûtes and the vegetable garnish, to put into each soup-plate a fragment of chicken, supposed to have been boiled with the broth, and an atom of the bouilli. A small allowance of beef marrow is also presented separately.
The helping is done for you by the garçon with much empressement, as if the operation were far too delicate for untutored hands, but when you come to take the soup, lo! a ridiculous mouse!—old croûtes-au-pot. Are the pieces of overboiled meat or the introduction of the marrow an improvement, and what attraction can be claimed for any soup that is only to be “à moitié degraissé”? I confess that I cannot perceive either.
On the whole it is comforting to note that Dubois adds : “Il est évident que ce potage peut être simplifié.”