Consommé
4 lbs. thickest part of hind beef shin. 1 lb. marrow-bone. 3 lbs. knuckle of veal. 4 cups chicken stock.
Carrot 3 tablespoons butter. 1 tablespoon salt. 1 teaspoon peppercorns. ½ dozen cloves. 1 small bay leaf. 2 sprays parsley. 1/2 cup each, cut in Celery 3 sprays thyme. cubes.
Turnip 2 sprays marjoram 4 quarts cold water. 1 medium-sized onion sliced.
PROCESS: Wipe the meat and bone with a piece of cheese-cloth wrung from cold water. Remove the meat from beef shin and cut it in one-inch cubes. Remove the marrow from bone and brown one-half the meat in the marrow, stirring constantly. Put remaining half in stock pot with cold water, add veal cut in small cubes, browned beef and bones. Let stand thirty-five minutes. Bring slowly to boiling point, skim and let simmer - closely covered - for three hours. Add chicken stock and continue simmering for two hours. Melt butter in frying pan, add the vegetables and cook five minutes, stirring constantly; then add to soup with remaining ingredients. Cook one and one-half hours. Strain, cool, remove fat and clear.
A full-scale hotel-style consommé: roughly seven hours of work spread over three stages, and it will not forgive a boil. Read the notes on clarifying before you start, since the original simply says "clear" and assumes you know how.
- Never let it boilOnce skimmed, the pot should hold at a bare tremble, around 180-190F, for the whole six and a half hours of simmering. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and drives fine protein into suspension, and no amount of later clarifying will fully undo a cloudy stock.
- "Clear" means a raftThe final instruction is an entire technique compressed into one word. Whisk two lightly beaten egg whites (plus their crushed shells, and traditionally a little chopped lean beef) into the cold degreased stock, bring it up slowly without stirring once it begins to set, hold at a bare simmer 20-30 minutes, then ladle carefully through a cloth-lined sieve.
- The cold-water soakThe thirty-five minute stand in cold water before heating is deliberate: soluble proteins leach out and coagulate into the scum you skim off, which is what makes clarifying possible later. Do not shortcut it by starting with hot water.
- The cutsHind beef shin with the bone, veal knuckle and marrow bone are all butcher-counter orders now. Shin (also sold as shank) supplies gelatin and flavour; the veal knuckle is what gives the finished consommé its body. Beef marrow bones can be substituted if veal knuckle is unavailable, but the set will be softer.
- Volume and vesselFour quarts of water plus four cups of chicken stock over eight pounds of meat and bone needs a 12-quart stockpot at minimum. Halving everything works cleanly if you have less capacity.
- Eighteen clovesA dozen and a half cloves in this quantity of liquid is assertive by modern palates, even though they go in only for the final ninety minutes. Tie the peppercorns, cloves and herbs in cheesecloth so you can pull them once the flavour is where you want it.
- Why the vegetables go in lastButter-sweating the carrot, celery, turnip and onion and adding them only for the final ninety minutes keeps them fresh-tasting. Vegetables cooked the full six hours turn dull and slightly sour and can muddy the broth.
- Cooling and fatCool the strained stock quickly in a shallow pan or an ice bath rather than leaving it out, then refrigerate overnight; the fat lifts off in a solid disc. Skipping the chill makes complete degreasing nearly impossible, and fat left behind will cloud the clarification.
- YieldExpect roughly two to two and a half quarts of finished consommé after reduction, straining and clarifying, or eight to ten first-course cups. The strained-out meat is spent, though it is edible in hash.
Consommé is the past participle of the French consommer, to complete or consummate: a stock carried all the way, concentrated and then clarified until it is perfectly transparent. That transparency was the whole point in the period this book comes from. A cook could produce bouillon or plain beef broth with little equipment, but a jellied, brilliant consommé served in cups before the roast advertised a household with time, a large pot, and a good butcher. It is a small piece of the era's kitchen economy as well: the shin, knuckle and marrow bone were cheap collagen-rich cuts, and turning eight pounds of them into two quarts of clear soup was considered a fair exchange of long slow heat for expensive flavour.