VICHYSSOISE

'Vichyssoise' (^[1], commonly mispronounced ) is a French-style soup made of puréed leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and chicken stock. It is traditionally served cold.

Contents

Origin

References

External links

Origin

The culinary origins of vichyssoise, namely whether it is a genuinely French dish or an American innovation, is a subject of debate among culinary historians. Credit for the dish usually goes to Louis Diat, the chef at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City for most of the first half of the 20th century. Diat related his recollection of the invention in New Yorker magazine in 1950:

''"In the summer of 1917, when I had been at the Ritz seven years, I reflected upon the potato-and-leek soup of my childhood, which my mother and grandmother used to make. I recalled how, during the summer, my older brother and I used to cool it off by pouring in cold milk, and how delicious it was. I resolved to make something of the sort for the patrons of the Ritz.^[2]
''

The same article explains that the soup was first titled ''crème vichyssoise glacée'', then, after the restaurant's menu changed from French to English in 1930, ''cream vichyssoise glacée''. Diat named his invention after Vichy, a town not far from his home town of Montmarault, which then was not yet tainted by ignominy.
Others contend that French chef Jules Gouffé was first to create the recipe, publishing a version in ''Royal Cookery'' (1869). Diat may have borrowed the concept from an older generation of French chefs and added the innovation of serving it cold.
Vichyssoise can be confused with its warm cousin ''Potage Parmentier''. Its cold serving temperature is used for comedic value in entertainment. For example, in the 1992 movie ''Batman Returns'', Bruce Wayne is surprised at its temperature, saying "It's cold!" to which his butler, Alfred responds that "It's supposed to be cold." Similarly, on an ''All in the Family'' episode, Archie Bunker's neighbor brings over a dish of vichyssoise for dinner to which Archie turns up his nose due it temperature. On stage, in the Broadway Musical ''Nunsense'', the convent's cook, Sister Julia Child-of-God, made a breakfast of vichyssoise soup that killed 52 of the nuns with food poisoning. The soup's influence is not limited to the comedic however as Chef Anthony Bourdain lists vichyssoise as the catalyst of his lifelong passion for food, telling of a transatlantic voyage on the ''Queen Mary'' at the age of 9, when he first discovered this "delightfully cool, tasty liquid".

References

1. William Little, ''et al''. (2002), Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
2. Talk of the Town, Hellman, Geoffrey T., , , The New Yorker, 1950

External links

★ A vichyssoise recipe