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Vichyssoise ( , ) is a soup made of cooked and puréed leeks, Potato, Onion and cream. It is served chilled and garnished with chopped chives. It was invented in the first quarter of the 20th century by Louis Diat, a French-born cook working as head chef of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York.
The most celebrated of the dishes Diat created at the Ritz-Carlton was vichyssoise. In a book published posthumously, he explained the background:
Sources vary about when Diat first introduced vichyssoise to the menu of the Ritz-Carlton. Betty Fussell proposes 1910 as the year, although the hotel did not open until the following year.Fussell, pp. 111–112 Several sources give the year as 1917, but there is no conclusive contemporary evidence for this. The soup was first mentioned in a French publication in 1923 in La Revue culinaire, which classified it as an item of American cuisine. It has never achieved the popularity in France that it has in the US and Britain.Zanger, p. 701
Some later recipes stipulate, although Diat's does not, that only the white parts of the leeks should be used.Willan, p. 103 Another important variant is the liquid in which the vegetables are simmered: rather than Diat's light cream and milk, chicken stock is specified in recipes by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child, in their Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961),Beck, Bertholle and Child, p. 36–37 Craig Claiborne (1969),Claiborne, pp. 102–103 and Anne Willan (1994).Willan, p. 102 Some recipes omit the onion, or add celeryFulton, p. 22 or dry white wine.Patten, p. 291
Ingredients
Unlike long-familiar classic French dishes, the recipes for which vary from region to region and generation to generation,David, 2008, pp. 289–290Montagné, 1977, p. 797David, 1999, p. 142 the creator's recipe for vichyssoise is set out in print. In Diat's Gourmet's Basic French Cookbook: Techniques of French Cuisine (1961) the ingredients are listed as potatoes, leeks and onions. They are cooked in light (single) cream and milk. The soup is chilled, and heavy (double) cream and chopped chives are added before serving.Diat, pp. 29 and 59
Variants
Alan Davidson comments in The Oxford Companion to Food that vichyssoise is so well established that it is sometimes used as a generic term.Davidson, p. 826 He gives the example of "a vichyssoise of parsnip and runner beans"; and other published variations include apple vichyssoise,Beard and Jerome, p. 23 carrot vichyssoise, cucumber vichyssoise,David, 1984, p. 40 lemon grass vichyssoise,Smith, p. 44 and watercress vichyssoise (using vegetable stock).Smith, p. 54 A completely vegan version dubbed "veggiesoise", using plant-based substitutes for chicken stock and cream, was published in 2005.Feral and Hall, p. 36
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