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Consomme Almond
Blanch and chop fine two dozen almonds; mix with an equal quantity stale bread crumbs; season with 1/2 saltspoonful salt, and add enough of the white of 2 eggs to bind the whole together; mix thoroughly, and form into tiny balls, roll them in the remaining white of egg, and drop into hot oil--not butter. If you do not use oil, take ordinary frying material--suet or lard. Shake till the balls are golden brown, lift with a skimmer, drain for an instant on soft brown paper, then put into tureen and turn over nicely seasoned hot stock.
This is a garnish recipe rather than a soup: fried almond forcemeat balls dropped into a clear consommé at the last moment. The whole point is contrast, so the frying and the pouring should happen within a minute or two of serving.
- The hingeServe immediately after the stock goes over the balls. They are crisp for only a moment; left to stand they soften into paste and the consommé clouds.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so half of one is roughly 1/8 teaspoon. Taste the mixture and adjust, since the stock carries most of the seasoning.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, let them stand a minute, then slip off the skins. Two dozen almonds is about 1 oz, so you want about the same loose volume of dry crumbs.
- CrumbsStale bread crumbs here means dry crumbs from day-old bread, grated or rubbed through a sieve, not soft fresh crumb. Fresh crumbs hold too much moisture and the balls will spread in the fat.
- Egg white as binderUse just enough white to make the mixture cohere when pressed; excess makes it slack and hard to roll. The reserved white for coating should be beaten only until loose, not frothy.
- Frying fatAny neutral oil at ordinary deep-frying heat, roughly 350-375F, works. The instruction against butter is sound: milk solids scorch and darken the balls before the interior sets. Suet or lard behave like oil here and give a slightly richer result.
- DrainingSubstitute paper towel or a rack for the brown paper. Drain briefly and do not salt again on the way out.
- YieldThe quantities are small: enough garnish for a few servings, a handful of tiny balls in all. Scale up in proportion if the balls are being made larger.
Nineteenth-century service treated clear soup as a canvas: a consomme was often named for whatever was floating in it, and cookbooks of the period list dozens of variations distinguished only by garnish -- royale custard, marrow balls, quenelles, profiteroles, julienne vegetables. Fried nut-and-crumb balls belong to the same family as forcemeat quenelles but use almonds in place of meat, a substitution associated with meatless service days and with the older European tradition of thickening and enriching dishes with pounded almonds, which reaches back to medieval cookery. The instruction to prefer oil over butter, and to fall back on suet or lard, suggests a period when the choice of frying fat was still a matter worth spelling out.