Zuppa for turkey (or any) broth
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Hi everybody,
First, everything is expensive so here’s a discount: 20% off all new subscriptions for the week. Thanks for keeping this thing chugging along.
Next, Thanksgiving recipes are not my favorite to dream up because your family’s traditions are more valuable than any recipe that might be easier, faster, and even more delicious.
It’s nice that some things stay the same. It’s nice to maintain rituals. It’s nice to cook something that hasn’t been weathered by the world, including today’s recipe — an old soup from an old book.
If you visit a grandparent’s house or a garage sale, you might find a stack of slim cookbooks that make up the Time Life series published from 1968 to 1980. In the Foods of the World series, white and Western writers including James Beard, Julia Child, and M.F.K. Fisher explore cuisines of the world, and The Good Cook series is organized by ingredients and cooking techniques.
I was perusing the cookbooks at the house my friend Nina is subletting for the winter (during her housewarming party — life of the party over here) when one unassuming recipe caught my eye.
The Zuppa alla Pavese in the Foods of the World book on Italy, by Waverley Root, doesn’t have a headnote. It uses five ingredients. The steps take up fewer than two inches of the page — but you don’t even really need that: Fry a slice of bread in butter and put it in a bowl. Place a poached egg on top of the bread. Pour hot broth around the toast. Grate Parmesan over the egg.
The recipe is almost trying to be ignored, but what I saw as I read was an egg resting on a bread-bed, tucked in under a blanket of melting cheese. And the bed gets comfier, smushier, as it soaks up broth.
I wanted that, or maybe I was just sleepy.
As straightforward as the soup seems, it’s actually more complicated than the original version from 1525. Legend says that King Frances I lost a bloody battle in Pavia, Italy, and found refuge in a farmhouse. A peasant woman made him this soup, which is now known as Zuppa all Pavese. Instead of poaching the egg, though, she cracked a raw egg on the bread, then cooked the egg just with the heat of the broth — neat, but tricky to execute.
The soup is best with broth that jiggles from gelatin, like leftover turkey broth from Thanksgiving. It also takes to a little spice: rubbing the bread with raw garlic and cracking black pepper on top. Though part of me thinks that spice is even tweaking the tradition of the soup too much.
