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Consomme
Take about fifteen pounds of veal, and about the same quantity of knuckles of veal, together with two rabbits if you can get them, put the whole into a stock-pot which has been previously spread with butter and broth enough to nearly cover the meat. Let the meat cook until reduced to a light-colored glaze; then fill it up with the remainder of the stock, and after it has boiled and been well skimmed, garnish it with carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, a few peppercorns, a small piece of mace and cinna- Let the broth simmer slowly six hours. Pass through a sieve, salt to taste, and put in a cool place for future use mon. [03]
This is a professional-scale brown stock, written for a hotel range rather than a home one. Scaling it down by two-thirds gives roughly the same result in a large stockpot.
- The garbled sentenceThe typesetting has broken "cinnamon" in two: the aromatics are "a small piece of mace and cinna-," and the orphaned "mon" ends up stranded after "put in a cool place for future use." Read it as: garnish with vegetables, peppercorns, mace and cinnamon, simmer six hours, strain, salt, cool.
- ScaleThirty pounds of meat in all (15 lb veal, as much again in knuckles) plus two rabbits is a professional batch and needs a very large pot; the recipe gives no finished yield, and how much you end up with depends on the reduction. For a quarter batch, about 4 lb veal shoulder, 4 lb veal knuckle and half a rabbit will work in an 8-quart pot.
- The hinge: the glazeEverything depends on cooking the meat down until the liquid reduces to "a light-colored glaze" on the bottom of the pot. That sticky reduction is the flavor of the finished broth. The recipe asks for a light color, so stop well short of browning, then deglaze with the rest of the stock, scraping the bottom clean.
- "Broth enough to nearly cover"The recipe assumes a hotel kitchen with yesterday's stock on hand. Water works, and so does a light unsalted chicken or veal stock; the point is that consommé of this kind was built on stock, not water, which is why it was so rich.
- KnucklesVeal knuckle means the joint end of the leg, sold now as osso bucco cross-cuts or as sawn veal bones. It supplies the gelatin that gives consommé its body on the tongue. Ask a butcher to saw it; whole knuckles are rarely displayed.
- RabbitFarmed rabbit is sold whole, usually 2.5-3 lb, at good butchers and by mail order. It is optional here -- "if you can get them" says as much -- but it adds a clean, faintly gamey depth that veal alone lacks.
- Simmer, never boilSix hours at a bare tremble. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and suspended protein into the liquid and no straining will clear it afterward. Skim thoroughly in the first twenty minutes, when most of the scum rises.
- ClarifyingPassing through a sieve leaves a broth that is clear-ish, not the glass-clear consommé of restaurant service. For that, chill, lift off the fat, then raft with egg whites and lean minced meat and strain through a cloth.
- Cooling and keeping"A cool place" meant a cold larder or icebox. Several gallons of hot stock left to cool slowly sits for hours in the range where spore-forming bacteria multiply. Divide it into shallow containers, get it below 40F within a couple of hours, and refrigerate up to four days or freeze.
Consomme -- from the French for "completed" or "consummated," a broth cooked until nothing more can be drawn from the meat -- was the backbone of nineteenth-century restaurant cookery, and a recipe like this one, calling for thirty pounds of veal, shows how much of a professional kitchen's raw material went into a single service. Veal was the standard base because it is rich in gelatin and mild enough to carry any garnish, which is why classical menus list dozens of consommes distinguished only by what floats in them. Rabbit was cheap, widely trapped, and treated as an ordinary meat well into the twentieth century in both Britain and America.