Purée de Haricots Verts, otherwise Cormeilles

Purée de Haricots Verts, dite Cormeilles (green bean purée), teaches the discipline of colour. Its green is won or lost before the soup ever becomes a purée: parboil quickly in abundant salted water, chill immediately, drain fiercely, then keep every later heat gentle. Potato is the liaison, the binder, not the flavour; the beans must remain the first and last word.

The original assumed a saucier on staff, white consommé from a stockpot never off the fire, boiling milk waiting nearby, and a tamis, a fine drum sieve, with someone to work the soup through it. At home, one pot of mild white consommé or carefully strained light chicken stock, a blender, and a fine-mesh sieve do the honest work. The formula's compact proportions already make a home batch of about two quarts, so the ratios stay intact; constant skimming is brigade scaffolding and goes, while the blanch, the butter stew, the potato binding, and the final passing stay because they are the dish. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Cormeilles should pour in a satin ribbon, bright green and softly rounded by milk, with butter shining at the surface and fresh bean lozenges under the spoon. The blanch is the step that matters most. Once the beans turn olive, no sieve can put the colour back, so have the ice bath ready before the water boils.