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Chicken Consommé (Cold)
Place a four-pound fowl in stock pot and a small knuckle of veal; add four quarts of cold water and heat slowly to boiling point. Skim, reduce heat and let simmer five hours. Do not allow liquid to boil as it will destroy its gelatinous properties, and the stock will be turbid. The last hour of cooking add one-third cup each celery, carrot and turnip cut in small dice, one-third cup sliced onion, one teaspoon peppercorns, one tablespoon salt, three sprays thyme, one spray marjoram, two sprays parsley, one-half bay leaf. Remove fowl and knuckle; strain soup through double cheese cloth, cool quickly, and remove all fat; clear. Fill Bouillon cups three-fourths full and chill. This should be a clear, savory jelly.
A five-hour simmer for a jellied consommé that sets on its own gelatin. The temperature of the pot matters more than anything else here.
- Never let it boilThe instruction to hold it below a boil is the hinge of the whole recipe. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and shreds protein into the liquid, which turns it cloudy and, worse, breaks down the collagen you are trying to convert into clean-setting gelatin. Aim for bare shivering — occasional bubbles at the edge, around 180-190F.
- "Fowl" is not a broilerA four-pound fowl meant an older laying hen, tough and rich in connective tissue. A supermarket roasting chicken of the same weight has far less gelatin and much less flavor after five hours. A stewing hen from a butcher or a Chinese or Latin grocery is the right bird; otherwise add extra chicken feet or wings to compensate.
- Knuckle of vealThe joint end of the leg, sold now as veal shank or osso buco cuts. It is there purely for gelatin. A pound of veal or beef knuckle bones, or split chicken feet, serves the same purpose.
- "Clear" means clarifyThe recipe's one-word instruction assumes you know the egg-white raft: whisk two or three egg whites with their crushed shells into the cold, degreased stock, bring it up slowly without stirring, let the raft form and hold it just below a simmer for twenty minutes, then ladle the liquid out through a cloth. Skipping this step gives you good broth but not consommé.
- Cool it quickly, and whyFour quarts of warm stock sitting on the stove overnight spends hours in the range where bacteria multiply fastest. Set the pot in a sink of ice water and stir it down, then refrigerate. Chilling also lifts the fat into a solid cap that peels off in one piece.
- Testing the setWhether it jells depends entirely on how much collagen your bird and bones gave up. Chill a spoonful before you fill the cups; if it stays liquid, reduce the strained stock further, taste for salt again as it concentrates, and re-test.
- Salt and yieldA tablespoon of salt in four quarts is on the light side by modern taste, and the liquid will reduce over the five hours — taste and adjust at the end. How much you finish with depends on how hard the pot simmers, so measure before filling the cups.,
- ServingJellied consommé broken up with a fork so it glistens rather than sitting as a solid plug. A wedge of lemon, and sometimes a spoonful of whipped or sour cream, were common accompaniments.
Jellied consommé appears in chapters of American cookbooks from around the turn of the century onward, when a cold first course suited a household with ice on hand. The method is classical French — long low extraction, aromatics added late, then clarification with egg white — written out for a domestic cook. The insistence that the liquid never boil reflects a period when cooks judged a stock by whether it set.