Whisk Wednesdays—Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup)

White soup. White stock. White chicken. White button mushrooms. And a touch of pink from the ham. This is Velouté Agnès Sorel, a cream of chicken soup. Agnès Sorel was a mistress of French King Charles VII in the 1400s and this is one of several dishes named after her.

This could also be the soup mentioned in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:

“As for the ball, it is quite a settled thing;
and as soon as Nicholls has
made white soup enough
I shall send round my cards.”

1. Make Stock
The first step is to make stock. Since I’m currently not in my kitchen with access to all the chicken stockpiled in my freezer from earlier lessons, I made some fresh chicken stock to start this soup. {I’m visiting family and friends in Saskatchewan and having fun raiding all the cupboards for food props!} Although the first thing I was supposed to do was truss the chicken, it came that way from the grocery store so I just had to plop it into my sister’s large stock pot.

2. Prep Garnish
Next, I prepped the mushrooms and ham (since tongue, which is mentioned as an alternative, is not something I really want to eat!), slicing them into julienne. When the chicken was poached, I sliced off the breast meat and cut it into julienne too. Still practicing that julienne!

3. Make Liaison
The last step is to make the liaison, which is a mixture of cream and egg yolks that thickens the soup and adds a richness of flavor. This is the trickiest part of the recipe since the eggs can curdle. Slowly whisking some hot stock into the cream and egg mixture is key. After “tempering” the cream and egg mixture by bringing it up to a similar temperature as the stock, I combined the rest of the stock and liaison in the pot. Then, I stirred and stirred and stirred and watched it carefully on the heat to thicken it a bit more. I was careful not to let it boil, but it never thickened as much as I expected it to.

Although the name of this soup says that it is a Velouté, there is no flour in the ingredient list to make a blond roux. I imagine if I added 2 tablespoons of flour, it would be a thicker soup, but the soup doesn’t need to be thicker.

“it is the duty of every housekeeper to learn the art of soup making”
~ Fannie Farmer in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1918) ~

Recipe

You can find the recipe for Velouté Agnès Sorel (Cream of Chicken Soup) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
This was a delicate, smooth soup that absorbed a smoky flavor from the ham. The chunks of chicken, mushrooms, and ham made it meal-worthy. I added more salt to boost the flavor, but it was a creamy, delicious soup that I’d love to make again. Coriander instead of parsley and coconut milk instead of cream and a few other Thai ingredients could quickly turn this into one of my favorite Thai soups: Tom Kha Gai!

Next Week (July 30)
• Bisque de Langoustins (Langoustine Bisque) pages 185-186

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Running total: $482.99 + $17.49 (stock) + $5.80 (soup) = $506.28

Butter used so far: 6 pounds, 14 tablespoons