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Consomme with Egg Noodles
Make the plain consomme, using Larkin Extract of Beef. Add to it a desired amount of Larkin Egg Noodles which have been previously cooked in boiling salted water.
A two-line assembly recipe that assumes you own the company's own products. The substitutions are straightforward, but the clarity of the broth is what makes or breaks it.
- Larkin Extract of BeefA concentrated meat extract sold in a jar, closest today to Bovril or a good beef base paste. Use about 1 teaspoon of paste per cup of water, then taste; commercial bases can be very salty, and the noodle water will add more.
- Larkin Egg NoodlesA packaged dried egg noodle; the recipe does not specify the cut. Fine egg noodles or broken tagliolini work; skinnier is better in a clear soup.
- Cook the noodles separately, and mean itThis is the hinge. Noodles boiled in the consommé release starch and turn a clear broth cloudy and slick. Boil them in salted water, drain, and rinse briefly under cold water to stop the surface starch from carrying over.
- On "plain consomme"A true consomme is clarified with egg white and lean meat; this one is built on extract, so unless the book's plain consomme recipe clarifies it, expect a strong bouillon rather than a crystal-clear broth. Strain it through a coffee filter or a doubled cloth if you want the look the name promises.
- ProportionThe original leaves the quantity to the cook. Roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of cooked noodles per serving of 1 to 1 1/2 cups broth keeps it a soup rather than a bowl of pasta.
- Assemble at the last minuteCooked noodles sitting in hot broth swell, soften and go slack within ten minutes. Warm them through in the consommé for under a minute before serving.
- SeasoningBeef extract is heavily salted; hold back on the salt until the noodles are in. A little dry sherry or a few drops of Worcestershire lifts a broth built from extract rather than bones.
Recipes like this one are advertising in the shape of a cookbook. The Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, built a national mail-order business in soap and household goods sold direct to homes, with premiums and club plans, and its branded groceries came with printed booklets showing how to use them. A page instructing the cook to reach for Larkin Extract of Beef and Larkin Egg Noodles is doing two jobs at once. Beef extract itself was a late-nineteenth-century convenience of real standing, descended from the meat-concentrate industry that grew up around Liebig's process, and it let a household set down something calling itself consommé without the day of simmering and clarifying that a classical consommé demands. Noodles in clear broth are old and widespread across European cooking; what is modern here is that both halves of the dish arrived in packages.