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Fennel, Apple and Almond Soup
Serves 6

This subtle summer soup is served at Peter Dixon’s White Moss House, in Grasmere, Cumbria, UK. William Wordsworth once owned the White Moss House. It is always served as a first course and is apparently based upon an ancient recipe.

As a variation, I serve the soup with a separate shot glass of Cream Sherry. The richness of the cream sherry plays off wonderfully against this unusual fruit-based soup.

2 tablespoons walnut or olive oil
1 8-ounce fennel bulb, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tart green apples, peeled, cored, chopped
1 6-ounce celery root, peeled, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
½ cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons ground toasted almonds
pinch of ground nutmeg or cloves, as you wish
sliced almonds for garnish
fennel fronds for garnish

Preparation: 1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. 2. Add fennel and onion and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. 3. Mix in the apple, celery root and chicken stock. Bring to simmer, cover and cook about 30 minutes. 4. Working in batches, transfer the mixture to a blender. Puree until smooth. 5. Add whipping cream, ground almonds and nutmeg or cloves. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Up to this point the soup may be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover tightly and refrigerate.)

Presentation: Reheat soup. Ladle into bowls and garnish with sliced almonds and fennel fronds. Serve with a shot glass of cream sherry, to be poured in by your dinner guest.

History of Fennel: Fennel has been known for centuries and was cultivated by the Romans for its aromatic fruits and succulent, edible shoots. Pliny the Elder had faith in its medicinal properties, recording no less than twenty-two fenne;-based remedies, observing also that serpents eat it “when they cast their old skins, and they sharpen their sight with the juice by rubbing against the plant.”

In mediaeval times Fennel was employed, together with St. John's Wort and other herbs, as a preventative against witchcraft and other evil influences. It was hung over doors on Midsummer's Eve to warn off evil spirits. Fennel was also eaten as a condiment with seafood and eaten by our forefathers during Lent.

Though the Romans valued the young shoots as a vegetable, it is not certain whether it was cultivated in northern Europe at that time, but it is frequently mentioned in Anglo-Saxon cookery and medical recipes prior to the Norman Conquest. Fennel shoots, Fennel water and Fennel seeds are all mentioned in an ancient record of Spanish agriculture dating AD 961. Charlemagne, who ordered its cultivation on his imperial farms, stimulated the diffusion of the plant in Central Europe. It is mentioned in Gerard (1597), and Parkinson (Theatricum Botanicum, 1640) tells us that its culinary use was derived from Italy, for he says:

“The leaves, seede and rootes are both for meate and medicine; the Italians especially doe much delight in the use thereof, and therefore transplant and whiten it, to make it more tender to please the taste, which being sweete and somewhat hot helpeth to digest the crude qualitie of fish and other viscous meats. We use it to lay upon fish or to boyle it therewith and with divers other things, as also the seeds in bread and other things.”

There are many references to Fennel in poetry. Milton, in Paradise Lost alludes to the aroma of the plant:

“A savoury odour blown, Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense, Than smell of sweetest Fennel.”

Richard Wottrich