🇫🇷 France
Potage Saint-GermainFrench pea soup
A classic French pea purée soup, made from fresh green peas or from split peas, puréed and finished with butter, served with fried bread croutons.
Origin and history
Potage Saint-Germain is a classic French pea purée soup. Its name is explained in different ways: one cooking school credits a Count of Saint Germain, minister of war under Louis XIV, who liked fresh and dried peas, while another source repeats a tradition that it was served at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye; neither is documented. In classic French cooking, Saint-Germain on a menu signals peas. Escoffier (1903) gives Purée Saint-Germain as fresh pea purée, and French catering sheets today use the name for split-pea purée.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 1 h 45 min
- Hands-on
- 35 min
Ingredients
- 400 g2 cups (14 oz) green split peas, rinsed; soaking is optional
- 2 onions, each studded with 2 cloves
- 1 bouquet garni, bay, thyme, parsley stems
- 1.5 litres6 cups cold water, or light chicken stock
- 50 g3 1/2 tbsp butter, 30 g to enrich the purée, 20 g for the croutons
- 4 slices white sandwich bread (pain de mie), crusts removed, cut into small cubes
- salt and pepper, to taste
- small bunch flat-leaf parsley or chervil, chopped
Method
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1. Put the split peas, clove-studded onions and bouquet garni in a large pot and cover with the cold water.
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2. Bring slowly to the boil, skim off the foam and reduce to a simmer.
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3. Cook about 1 hour 15 minutes, until the peas fall apart when pressed, seasoning with salt halfway through.
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4. While the peas cook, fry the bread cubes in 20 g of the butter over medium heat, turning, until golden and crisp; drain and keep aside.
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5. Remove the bouquet garni and the cloves from the onions.
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6. Purée the peas and onions with their liquid until smooth, adding hot water if too thick, and pass through a sieve if you want it silky.
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7. Reheat gently and stir in the remaining 30 g of butter until melted; taste for salt and pepper.
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8. Serve in deep bowls topped with the croutons and herbs.
Notes
- The parent recipe here is the split-pea form, which a French catering-school sheet (Interfel) lists as purée de pois cassés, also called purée Saint-Germain; it keeps all year. The form Escoffier gives under Purée Saint-Germain is the fresh-pea one, made with fresh spring peas and finished with butter; it is lighter and brighter green.
- Cooks use the name loosely: Little and Whittington say any recipe with Saint-Germain or Clamart in the title contains peas, and note that a little fresh or frozen petits pois stirred in improves the colour and flavour of a split-pea version. A fresh-pea version with potato also exists.
- The French Cooking Academy version starts with diced carrot, onion, leek and pork belly sweated in butter and adds garlic; the catering sheet keeps to clove-studded onions and a bouquet garni, as here.
- Thickens on standing; thin with hot water when reheating.
Adapted from Interfel (French fruit and vegetable interprofession), Fiche 10: Purée de pois cassés (purée Saint-Germain), The French Cooking Academy, Potage Saint Germain, and Alastair Little and Richard Whittington, The Daily Mail Modern British Cookbook (1998), Potage Saint-Germain.
At the festivals
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