Consomme
This is a specially fine recipe, and is not given in any cook book. Put two pounds of perfectly lean round steak in a hot frying pan, and let it cook quickly to a deep brown on both sides; when so browned chop fine, cover with two quarts of cold, strong, highly flavored stock. add the half-beaten whites and crushed shells of two eggs, beat well and proceed as in clearing soup. When strained, it is ready for reheating and serving.- E. M. K.
This is a clarification method rather than a stock recipe: the browned beef and egg white do the work, and the finished soup is only as good as the stock you start with. A few points the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: never let it boilBring the pot up slowly and hold it at a bare tremble, around 190F, with no stirring once the egg white begins to set. A rolling boil breaks the raft apart and drives the cloudy particles back into the liquid, and no amount of straining afterwards will recover it.
- "Proceed as in clearing soup"Combine everything cold, whisk it into the stock before any heat goes on, then bring it gently to that bare simmer and leave it 45 to 60 minutes until a solid grey raft has formed and the liquid beneath runs clear. Ladle rather than pour, through a fine sieve lined with damp muslin or several layers of cheesecloth.
- "Strong, highly flavored stock"At the time this was written that meant a long-simmered brown beef stock stiff with gelatin, not tinned broth. Supermarket cartons are too weak and too salty for this treatment; reduce them first or use homemade stock, and season only after clarifying, since the volume will drop.
- Skim the fat firstChill the stock and lift off the solidified fat before you start. Fat left in the pot coats the egg proteins and prevents a clean raft, and the finished consomme should be bright, not slicked.
- Round steakAny very lean beef works: bottom round or eye of round, trimmed of every scrap of fat and gristle. Two pounds is a generous amount of meat to sacrifice for flavor and clarity, which is the point of the dish. Grinding it coarsely is easier than chopping and gives the same result.
- The browningA dry, hot heavy pan and a hard sear on both sides gives the deep amber color the soup is prized for. Deglaze the pan with a little of the cold stock and add that in, or you leave the best of it behind.
- Yield and servingTwo quarts of stock will finish somewhat short of eight cups once it has simmered and been strained, enough for six or so as a first course. Serve it very hot in cups, plain or with a spoonful of some small garnish; a properly made consomme sets to a light jelly when chilled.
Consomme, from the French for "completed" or "consummated," is the end point of nineteenth-century stockmaking: broth clarified with egg white and enriched with fresh lean beef until it is both perfectly transparent and concentrated in flavor. It became the standard opening of formal dinners in the late 1800s precisely because it was so laborious and so unforgiving; a clear soup announced that a kitchen had time, fuel, and meat to spare. The line "is not given in any cook book" and the initials E. M. K. suggest a contribution from a reader rather than the compiler's own kitchen. The technique itself is essentially unchanged today, and the resulting soup is the base of the long list of named consommes in classical French service, where the garnish rather than the broth supplies the name.