Red Wine Soup

Somewhat reduced, with an additional garnish of sautéed mushrooms and little butter-cooked onions, this soup becomes the basic Burgundy sauce in which beef is cooked for a Bourguignon, chicken for a coq-au-vin, eel for a matelotte; poached eggs, brains, veal, lungs, or a variety of river fish, thus sauced, are said to be en meurette.

The dried crusts and chopped herbs may be replaced by crisp little croutons cooked in butter and rapidly sautéed in a pe