Name: Potage Au Vermicelli, or Vermicelli Soup
Ingredients: 2 ounces vermicelli; 1 quart consomme; 1 head celery; a little coarse sea salt

Potage Au Vermicelli, or Vermicelli Soup

Ingredients

2 ounces vermicelli
1 quart consomme
1 head celery
a little coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare the vermicelli

Boil the vermicelli in clear water with a little coarse sea salt.
Drain the vermicelli quickly using a sieve.

Make and serve the soup

In a pot, bring the consommé to a boil with the head of celery.
Add the drained vermicelli to the boiling consommé and cook for a few minutes.
Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Vermicelli: Thin pasta that softens in the hot consommé and gives the soup its body.
Consommé: Clear seasoned stock that forms the liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Draining the vermicelli quickly. Pasta keeps cooking from its own residual heat and absorbs liquid, so leaving it to sit can make it soft and cloudy. Draining it promptly and adding it to the hot consommé keeps the strands tender but not mushy and the broth clear.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.