Soup fit for a Comtesse

This week, I share a recipe for one of the most elegant of soups, and a slightly Spring-y market haul.

All pale shoulders, rustling silks, fine lace and soft pink roses. La Comtesse du Barry, by Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, 1782. Image courtesy of National Gallery of Art, under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence

It has been an odd, lengthy, teasing transition between winter and spring, one that has been more backwards than forwards. At one moment, my heart is cheered by the first bright orange California poppy, and the next, I am upping my investment in cashmere and trying to remember where, two years ago, I hid those expensive, glossy Aigle wellington boots so the dogs couldn’t chew them. I’m all sunglasses and raincoats.

In such a spring as this, soup helps. It can be as light as the day demands, or made more substantial by the addition of croûtons, cream, crème fraîche, cheese, poached eggs, scrackly bits of bacon, chopped herbs, seasoned butter, or various punchily flavoured oils. You know how layering is the secret to packing for a trip when you’re uncertain of the weather at your destination? So it is with soup. Add, substract, or layer, and you have a dish that’s always appropriate for the conditions.

With this in mind, I thought today and for the two coming Wednesdays, I would share recipes for three of my favourite, classic French soups which are soothing and, of course, delicious, but can be made with the kind of ingredients you can pick up fairly thriftily on your weekly shop.

Brighter weather at last. That snuffling you can hear is my dog, Gracie.

Today’s recipe is for crème du Barry, the elegant cauliflower soup named after the Comtesse du Barry, the illegitimate daughter of a provincial seamstress who, through beauty, charm and wit, became the final maîtress-en-titre of Louis XV, a rôle previously occupied by Madame de Pompadour.

Cauliflowers were introduced to France from Genoa in the Sixteenth Century and became popular on royal tables during the reign of Louis XIV. Our Comtesse is said to have liked them, though who knows? It’s more likely that a court chef tried to gain favour with the King’s mistress by naming this pale, elegant dish after her. Its restraint and purity remind me of Jeanne du Barry’s pale, silky shoulders* in one of Elisabeth Vigée le Brun’s many portraits of the beauty. The exuberant curls of the comtesse’s powdered wigs are reminiscent of cauliflower florets, too.

The soup is traditionally made with veal stock, though I use chicken or vegetable stock as that’s usually what I have. You’ll sometimes see it called Velouté du Barry, which means it’s thickened with cream and egg yolks, or Crème du Barry, as in today’s recipe, when it’s enriched with cream alone. The Comtesse’s name is most often associated with this soup, but if you see it on a menu or in a recipe, it always indicates that cauliflower will be found somewhere in its ingredients.

*The comtesse du Barry’s beautiful head and shoulders were abruptly separated from each other by the guillotine, on December 8, 1793, in the Place de la Révolution, now Place de la Concorde.

Crème du Barry, with browned butter and chives.

Crème du Barry

Cream of cauliflower soup

This soup is so simple and inexpensive to make, and yet it tastes luxurious enough to serve to a smart crowd. Buy the freshest cauliflower you can, as creamy-white as possible without any black speckling, as anything that isn’t squeaky-fresh can imbue your elegant soup the unmistakable aroma of old cabbage. If it’s very young and fresh, you can chop up the stem into cubes and include that too.

I garnish the soup today with some snipped chives and browned butter, but once it starts pushing itself out of the earth, I think it’s very beautiful simply finished with a few leaves of chervil. So much restraint.

Save the leaves – if you have a sparklingly fresh cauliflower, they’re far too good for the compost bin – and roast them later with a little olive oil, flaky salt and pepper until the edges are lightly charred. They’re really delicious as a side dish or as part of a warm salad with some roast chickpeas and a tahini and lemon dressing.

Serves 6

40g butter
1 small onion, about 150g, diced
1 cauliflower, about 700g, broken down into florets, stem diced
1 medium potato, about 200g, peeled and diced
400ml chicken, veal or vegetable stock
400ml whole milk
150ml double or single cream
A few gratings of nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground pepper, white pepper if you have it or if you want to be fancy. It’s all about the purity.

To finish
Some finely snipped chives
Some browned butter – this is optional, but I love it with the creamy cauliflower.

Simply warm a little butter in a small pan over a medium-low heat until it becomes fragrant and hazelnut-brown. Don’t let it burn, you just want it to be rich and nutty. As soon as it’s done, pour the clear, browned butter into a little jug or bowl, leaving the milk solids at the bottom of the pan, and reserve it until you’re ready to serve the soup.

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan (you need one with a lid, ideally, or use a plate if you don’t have a lid) melt the butter over a low heat. Add the onion and a good pinch of salt and sauté it very gently, stirring often, for about 10 minutes. Don’t let it take on any colour.

Add the cauliflower and the potato, give everything a good stir and put the lid on the pan. Stir it now and again and cook for 10 minutes. You don’t want them to take on any colour, you’re just cooking them gently to blend the flavours.

Add the stock and the milk and bring to a simmer. Cook gently, partly covered, for 15 minutes, until the cauliflower and the potato are tender enough to crush on the edge of the pan with the back of a spoon. Season with a few gratings of nutmeg and some salt and pepper.

Purée the soup with a stick blender or in a food processor until very, very smooth.

Return the soup to the pan and stir in the cream. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Warm through gently and serve in warmed bowls, garnished with some finely chopped chives and some dots of brown butter if you like.

Printable Recipe

Crème Du Barry

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Next week, I’ll share with you a recipe for Potage Saint-Germain, named after the Comte de Saint-Germain, Louis XIV’s minister of war, who - like me – had a penchant for peas.

Market haul, March 25, 2025

This week’s market haul comprises: Somehow, we gathered a few free things today including this end of cheese made with wild garlic “pour le chien”, a wedge of Brie, a slice of Cantal, a bunch of coriander, two bunches of asparagus, some ham (the slicer was broken today, so the woman on the butchery stall was cutting them by hand, so they’re quite thick – no complaints), a red pepper, Angélys pears, spring onions, spinach for one, a jar of local honey, a cauliflower, some free parsley, a sliced loaf of what the baker calls Viking bread (it has some rye in it), onions, some free mini kiwi fruit and a free shallot. There were no eggs today. I feel I can look my American friends in the face.

Asparagus… and so it begins…

The first of the local asparagus is coming in now, and the obvious thing would be to draw my recipe for this week from that, like any halfway decent food writer. But the truth is, for these first few weeks, I just eat is as it is, with a vinaigrette or some melted butter and salt. Give me a moment to just mainline the chlorophyll, and I’ll be back with the asparagus tarts, frittate, soups, salads right after I’ve wiped the butter off my chin.

I bought this asparagus pan a few years ago – it wasn’t very expensive, about 20€ - and for a few weeks in Spring, I never put it back in the cupboard. I just keep it on the stove, on green alert for asparagus emergencies. You fill the bottom with about 10cm of water to boil the thicker ends of the asparagus and just leave the top of the spears to steam, so they are perfectly cooked along the whole length.

A quick lunch, on the table within 30 minutes of getting back from the market. Asparagus dressed in a vinaigrette and finished with chopped boiled egg – asparagus mimosa – with some of the thickly cut ham.

A week of firsts

What I’m listening to while I walk the dog this week…

Yesterday, I had to sit on a bench for a few minutes to try and work out what was going on in this extraordinary family memoire. On the same page, you find comedy, tragedy, and tense psychological thriller. In Kiss Myself Goodbye: The many lives of Aunt Munca, Ferdinand Mount pieces together the life of his glamorous, mysterious Aunt Munca (from Hunca Munca, Beatrix Potter’s “bad mouse”), or Elizabeth, or Betty, or Eileen, or whatever she was calling herself in that particular lifetime. Munca and her husband, Unca (George, or Greig, or Gregg), lived a raffish life, with a permanent suite in Claridge’s (which they called “The Pub”), Rolls Royces and society parties. One of Munca’s many fictions was that she was born in New York, part of the powerful, socially prominent Baring banking family, and grew up in the Philippines. The truth was rather closer to Sheffield and scrap metal.

Munca had a brother, or was he her son, Buster (or Alistair, Archie, Alfred…), who was married seven times, and had as many careers as wives – he was at various points, a racing driver, farmer, timber merchant, furniture seller, and an author. It is such a strange, gripping story which Mount tells with enormous wit, tenderness and style, that on more than one occasion, I found myself walking along the port and exclaiming WHAT? to myself and any passers-by as the story took yet another eye-widening turn. I’m only three-quarters of the way through it and I’m rationing it because I won’t quite know what to do with myself when I finish it.