French Onion Soup from 1651

Bánh mì ớt is one of the staples of French cuisine. But the way we ate it today with bread, bread on a bread, I'm really very focused. So, I've decided I want to see how the bread is made. With this bread from the history of Louis XIV Cho bánh mì with water. So, thank you Bright Sours for developing this video When we made bread in 1651, This time, on the TIN. French said, Or there looking for your bread. It means "to find bread". But today, I'll take the history course and find your bread, Or there I will find bread by François-Pierre de La Verraine Because this bread was developed from the book bread in 1651, The French chef. When your chicken breast is cut very small, And start in the water until the bread is ready. mỡ cho đến khi bánh mì nước ớt đã sẵn sàng, I'm going to have to go to the bathroom. When you're done, go to the water and drink. If the chicken is ready, put it in the water until the chicken is ready. It's very simple but it seems different from the Chinese water-bread-chips, And it will be very interesting. The biggest difference is that - I'm not sure. He uses water, Now that this oil was used and developed in 1651, It also appears in a book called "Bánh mì ớt" that will be developed in 2023, Especially the book "Bread and Chips" that will be developed in a week. And to congratulate the development of the book Bread and Cakes of History, I can do a very, very good job. with one of our materials, Bright Cellars. We'd like to congratulate the book on the development of the bread and butter. We've been trying to figure out how to do it for a while. And finally we found a way. I sent them the book of bread and butter. And then they had one of their bread and butter books. I'll pick some books I like. And it'll go with some chili bread. Usually with Bright Cellars, He took a book with 7 questions. Then Bright Cellars sends you the book and the cake with your reason. But in this case, You took the book with my reason. It's called the book of bread and butter. Pleasure Principle Old Vine Zinfandel That's my proof book. The Juicy and Fruit Forward Hazelaire Merlot to accompany Lafayette's French Duck with shallots And even my favourite Batik Chenin Blanc Which is not meant to accompany a recipe but to make a white hypocrisy Perfect for the springtime. I'll be making it when my mom comes to visit. So I'm super excited to share these wines with you Whether you drink them with something that you actually make from the cookbook or with something else you're eating or by themselves they go well alone. I'm just excited to share them with you. But because it's to celebrate the release of the cookbook It's only available for a limited time. But it's a wonderful way to try Bright Cellars before actually subscribing. So click the link in the description And you can get my exclusive wine bundle from Bright Cellars. With 20% off when you order within the next two weeks. Also it will arrive with a little note from you. So thank you Bright Cellars. Thank you to anyone who orders from Bright Cellars. And thank you La Varenne for sharing the recipe we're making today. So La Varenne is actually extremely interesting as a cook Because he lives on the cusp between two major culinary epics. The late Middle Ages and Renaissance on the one hand and French haute cuisine on the other. The first is a wash in spices and sauces thickened with breadcrumbs and sweet and savory flavors are often mixed together in a single dish But French haute cuisine has ditched all that. in favour of more fresh herbs and fresh vegetables along with complicated stocks, creamy sauces, And of course they relegated the very sweet flavors or sugar in general to dessert only at the end of the meal. And a lot of Varenne's recipes kind of straddle both worlds. But I feel like this one really is in the latter. It's close to French haute cuisine. See medieval cuisine was often trying to fit as many different flavors into one dish as possible. Polysavory is the term coined by Ken Alvala, a wonderful food historian And friend here on the show But this dish and French haute cuisine was really more mono savory I guess. Their goal was to showcase one single flavor with other ingredients Just to complement rather than compete with that flavor And this one is obviously onions But when cooked well onions don't need much help Because they're just so complicated and rich. So for this recipe what you'll need is two to four onions. If they're big then two, if they're small then four. It really doesn't matter. You can't have too many onions. And you can use yellow onions because that's what I prefer Or you can use white. Four tablespoons or 57 grams of salted butter, one and a half cups or 350 millilitres of water, half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of pepper. You'll probably be adding more salt and pepper as you go along But start with half a teaspoon of each and then ramp it up from there. Three cups or 700 milliliters of whole milk at room temperature and 8 to 12 slices of French baguette. So to start taking the peeled onions and slicing them in half from the root to the stem, Then chop them into fairly thin slices. They don't have to be perfect or uniform because they're all going to end up kind of look the same at the end. Then take a large saucepan and melt the butter and then with heat at a medium low temperature add the onions. They'll probably fill the whole pot but eventually they'll cook way, way down. Just keep moving them around every couple of minutes so they don't burn, And as they start to shrink and darken you can raise the heat But just be careful you don't want them to burn so keep them moving around. It'll take them about 45 minutes to an hour. Get to the dark golden brown you want. Your whole house will smell of onions in the best possible way. Once they get to a dark golden brown, pour the water into the saucepan. and use a wooden spoon to scrape the sides and bottom, and then add the salt and pepper and let the soup simmer. Then cover the saucepan and let it simmer for a full 15 minutes. Then pour in the milk and with a medium heat let the soup slowly return to a boil. Later recipes start adding other ingredients to make sure that the milk doesn't split But this one doesn't and it's probably going to split a little bit, But as soon as it starts to boil you want to take it off the heat and it will split less. Now while the soup is cooking or really any time before you could even do it the day before You want to prepare your baguette. Just make sure they're nice and stale. If they're not really stale then put them in the oven at a low temperature for about 30 minutes to dry them out But once they're nice and dry put them in the oven at the top rack at 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 205 degrees Celsius for about three to five minutes on each side Just until they're well browned, And while they're toasting you can contemplate, I'm even ruminating on the history of French onion soup. There's an old French proverb that translates to If you don't have a capon be glad you have bread and onion, And while I'm guessing it actually means be grateful for what you have It kind of gets you halfway to a decent onion soup. Because onion soup is really, really simple and it's been that way for a very long time. Residues from pots found in ancient Greece and Rome show that soups where onion was the main ingredient have been made for thousands of years. Onions were sometimes seen as a food for the poor But they were also eaten by the rich sometimes for their medicinal qualities or in ancient Rome to gear up one's libido. Onion soups flourished throughout the Middle Ages But very often at least in the written recipes that we have Onions kind of take a back seat to other ingredients in the soup. Even by the 17th century many onion soup recipes were still filled with peas, and parsley, and other herbs and vegetables But the basic onion soup like the one we're making today eventually became a staple of French cuisine even among the aristocracy. Now how exactly that happened is not entirely known But there are two stories that kind of tell the story. One is definitely more believable than the other. Because the other thing I'm going to say first is that it's just so not true. It gives credit to King Louis XV not only for popularizing But for actually inventing the first onion soup A full 75 years after the recipe we're using today was written down. It claims that Louis had just returned from a hunting trip and he was starving So this French king who had never even dressed himself decided to go into the kitchen and whip himself up a snack but in the kitchens of one of the richest kings in Europe There were no ingredients except for some onions, some butter, and some champagne. So with no staff around and no culinary experience He whips up the first onion soup that's I guess based on champagne. There are so many holes in this story that I'm not even going to dignify it with a rebuttal. Now the second story is a little less bizarre And it is told to us by none other than Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers. He says it was actually Stanislaw Leszczynski, Duke of Lorraine and former King of Poland. who made the dish popular. Didn't invent it but made it popular and as this Duke of Lorraine, former King of Poland was actually the father-in-law of King Louis XV and was a well-known gourmand, He's often credited with inventing the rum baba as well, There's at least some possible legitimacy to the story. Dumas says that in the case of onion soup Leszczynski was traveling to Versailles When he stopped at a inn in Chalons where he was served an onion soup so delicate and so well crafted that he refused to continue his journey without learning its preparation. So he goes into the kitchen and starts learning how to make this soup. And neither the smoke nor the smell of the onions that brought tears to his eyes could distract him from his task. He observed everything, took note of it and went to his carriage only After being sure he had learned every aspect of the art of making excellent onion soup. Now at least the story doesn't claim that he invented onion soup but I also kind of question The claim that he was the one to bring it to the aristocracy Seeing as onion soup recipes had been used in the cookbooks of the aristocracy for about a hundred years before. Go figure it out. Regardless, by the 19th century onion soup had become a staple dish. But the version we know and love today actually came from the common people specifically of Paris. At Les Halles a massive Parisian food market founded in the 12th century Soup was sold to the people of Paris every day for hundreds of years. The author Emile Zola described it in the 19th century. The bright tin cauldron full of broth was steaming over a small low stove from the holes of which came a bright flame of burning coals. From a basket lined with napkins the woman took some thin slices of bread and poured them into yellow cups. Then with a ladle she filled the cups with soup. Now the soup he's actually talking about was a cabbage soup but onion soups were served right next to it, And the people of Paris in this area threw out the milk from many of their recipes and replaced it with veal or chicken stock. And sometime during the 19th century they also added gruyere cheese to the dish But it wasn't actually in the dish like it is today. Alexandre Dumas says great gruyere cheese and serve it separately in a saucer for enthusiasts. Now served out of big cauldrons at a market it makes sense that the cheese would be served on the side but as restaurants grew around the market They started incorporating cheese into the dish. They also gave it perhaps the first written claim that it was good for a wine hangover. If you wish to taste this soup so appreciated by the disciples of Bacchus prepare it according to the following instructions. This recipe from 1913 then goes on to explain basically a modern French onion soup Except the cheese and the bread aren't on top. but on the bottom of the bowl and the soup is poured over it. Then in 1927 a recipe for soup à l'oignon gratiné puts the cheese and the bread on top and has you melt the cheese over it. And that's how French onion soup is going to be served pretty much. You order it everywhere especially outside France today Except when you come to this house where I still serve it the old-fashioned way, 1651 style, and here we are. Onion soup with milk. First can I tell you how good my house smells right now? I just wish I could make this every day even if I wasn't eating it. It just smells, smells so good. Here we go. - What? It's so good. So, so good. It's just when I taste this there's just this warm calm that floods over me. It's so homely, and simple but so, so flavorful. When you cook the onions for a long time they get sweet but also a little, A little salty. You know they still have that onion flavor in them but they're just, They're so complex, they're so delicious, And the thing is I knew this would be delicious. Usually I'm tasting something for the first time but I made this for the cookbook so I knew it would be good, And that's why I did it for this first recipe, Or first episode of recipes from the cookbook that I haven't done already on the show Because I knew it was going to be fantastic and everyone should try it. So don't forget to order your copy of Tasting History The Cookbook and Your bottles of Bright Cellars wine to accompany the dishes from the book, And the next time I see you I'm gonna be a published author here on Tasting History.