Purée d’Oseille et de Semoule à la Crème

Purée d’Oseille et de Semoule à la Crème (creamed sorrel and semolina soup) teaches one true thing: richness must support the sorrel, not smother it. The leaf supplies the bright, almost lemony edge that keeps milk, butter, and semolina awake. Cook it properly and the soup is smooth and generous, but every spoonful still has a little snap.

The compact source entry assumes the preceding method is already in the cook’s hands, with a saucier watching the milk, a tamis, the fine drum sieve, close by, and a pot sized for service. Here the finished quantity becomes about two quarts. An immersion blender replaces the brigade’s first laborious passing, while the final fine sieve stays because that texture is the dish. The specified three ounces of semolina stay too. Multiple passes are scaffolding and can go; butter-softened sorrel, the grain’s full cooking, and the egg-and-cream liaison cannot. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished purée should be pale olive rather than bright green, glossy at the surface, and just thick enough to cling lightly to a spoon. The one step that decides it is the liaison: temper it gently, then never let the soup boil after the yolks go in.