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Consomme Amber
3 pounds veal-knuckle; 3 pounds beef shin; 2 pounds young fowl; 2 medium-sized onions; 1 small carrot; 1 small turnip; 2 stalks celery with the tops; 2 sprigs parsley; 2 teaspoonfuls mixed sweet herbs; 2 blades mace; 6 whole cloves; 6 whole allspice; 2 teaspoonfuls salt; 1 saltspoon white pepper; 1 bay leaf; 1 lemon; 3 egg whites and shells; 4 quarts water. Wipe and cut the meat in small pieces, crack all the bones; cut up and wash the chicken. Put them all in the kettle with the cold water, let it stand half an hour, then heat slowly. When boiling add the vegetables, chopped or sliced, the herbs and other seasoning, and simmer slowly six hours. By this time the meat should be in shreds and the bones clean. Strain and let it cool. When cold take off the fat, put on the fire, and while still cold add the egg whites and shells, and the lemon washed and sliced, and more salt, if necessary. Mix well, heat, and boil ten minutes. Strain through a napkin, wet and laid inside a fine strainer. It should be clear and of a beautiful amber color. Just before serving heat, and add 2 tablespoonfuls of sherry. If not colored enough, add a very little caramel, or enough to give it the desired color. Serve a small quantity only.
To the amber consomme may be made many additions, changing the character and giving it the name of the principal addition.
A full-scale classic consommé: eight pounds of meat and bones plus a fowl reduced into four quarts of water, then clarified with egg. Nothing here is difficult, but the clarification step is where the whole thing succeeds or fails.
- The hinge: clarify from coldThe egg whites and shells must go into cold degreased stock and be whisked in before any heat is applied. If the stock is warm the whites set in shreds instead of forming a coherent raft, and the consommé stays cloudy. Once the raft rises, stop stirring and hold at the barest tremble rather than a rolling boil.
- "Boil ten minutes"Read this as a bare simmer for ten minutes. A true boil breaks the egg raft apart and drives fine particles back into the liquid, undoing the clarification.
- Saltspoon and bladesA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. A blade of mace is one strip of the lacy aril around a nutmeg; if you only have ground mace, roughly 1/4 teaspoon stands in for the two blades, though published equivalences vary. The recipe adds it with the other seasonings at the start of the simmer.
- Mixed sweet herbsIn this period 'sweet herbs' usually meant some mix of dried thyme, marjoram, savory, sage or basil; the exact blend and proportions varied from book to book. Any combination of those, to the two teaspoonfuls' worth, will do.
- Veal knuckle and beef shinBoth are still sold, though usually by request at a butcher counter. Veal knuckle supplies the gelatin that gives consommé its body on the tongue; without it the result tastes thin no matter how well seasoned. "Young fowl" here means a small chicken of 2 lb, bones and all.
- StrainingA doubled length of damp cheesecloth in a fine sieve does what the wet napkin did. Ladle rather than pour, and leave the last cloudy inch behind.
- Caramel for colorThe period caramel is sugar cooked dark to bitterness and let down with water — a coloring agent, not a sweetener. A few drops are enough; more will taste burnt. Gravy browning serves the same purpose.
- Yield and servingPerhaps 2 to 2 1/2 quarts of finished consommé, depending on how hard it simmers, which would give ten or a dozen of the small servings the recipe asks for. Chill a spoonful to check the set: it should be barely jellied, not firm.
- Timing over two daysThe six-hour simmer, overnight chill for degreasing, and clarification divide naturally across two days. The stock keeps three days refrigerated and freezes well before clarifying.
Amber consommé belongs to the graded system of clear soups that French service imposed on English and American formal dinners through the nineteenth century: a clarified stock was named for its color or its garnish, and a printed menu could signal the whole character of a meal with two words. The closing line here — that additions change the name of the soup — is the working logic of that system, in which consommé julienne, royale or brunoise were all this same base with one thing added. The instruction to serve only a small quantity is not thrift but structure; the clear soup opened a long meal and was meant to sharpen appetite rather than satisfy it. Compendia like this one carried such recipes into households that had no French chef but did have a cook, a coal range and the ambition to set a correct table.