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Consommé à la Rachel
Ingredients.
Clear consommé, to which is added some very small quenelles made in teaspoons.
One part coloured with pounded Tarragon.
One part coloured with Lobster Coral.
One part coloured with Truffles pounded.
These quenelles must be all mixed separately, poached separately, and kept in cold water until the soup is ready. Put them into the tureen and pour the boiling consommé on them.
A garnish recipe rather than a soup recipe: the book assumes you already have clear consommé and a standard quenelle forcemeat on hand, and tells you only how to colour, shape and hold the garnish. The points below fill in what a Victorian professional kitchen took for granted.
- The hinge: never poach in the consomméThe quenelles are poached separately in lightly salted water or a little spare stock precisely so the raw forcemeat does not cloud the clarified soup. Anything that goes into the tureen must already be cooked and rinsed.
- The forcemeat is unstatedA quenelle farce of this period is typically pounded raw chicken or veal worked with a panada or soaked breadcrumb, egg white and cream, then sieved. The recipe specifies no quantities; make enough for the number of servings wanted and divide it into three equal parts before colouring.
- Poaching temperatureWater barely trembling rather than boiling; a modern thermometer reading of roughly 170-180F suits. At a rolling boil the egg white sets too fast and the little quenelles burst or turn spongy. A couple of minutes is usually enough for teaspoon-sized ones; they float and feel just firm.
- Shaping in teaspoonsThe old method is two wetted teaspoons used as moulds, the farce scooped with one and smoothed off with the other to give a small pointed oval. Dip the spoons in hot water between each.
- Lobster coralThe dark green roe of a hen lobster, which turns coral red when cooked. Fishmongers rarely sell it separately now, so you need a whole hen lobster; failing that, paprika-tinted butter will give the tint, and the colour is the point rather than the flavour.
- Tarragon and trufflePounded fresh tarragon gives only a pale green; a spoonful of sieved blanched spinach was a common classical way of deepening a green farce. Truffle should be pounded to a paste so it colours the farce grey-black throughout rather than speckling it.
- Holding and reheatingCold water keeps them from sticking, but boiling consommé poured over ice-cold quenelles will land in the bowl merely warm. The recipe goes straight from the cold water to the tureen; if you would rather not lose the heat, drain them, warm them through in a little hot stock, then transfer to a heated tureen and pour the consommé over at a full boil.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities. Allow a normal soup-cup of consommé per person and enough quenelles that every bowl shows two or three of each colour.
Garnished consommés were the small change of the late nineteenth-century dinner, each name signalling a fixed set of additions to anyone who had trained in a professional kitchen; the tricolour quenelle was a favourite because it demonstrated control of both farce and clarification in a single spoonful. The title is generally taken to honour Élisa Rachel Félix, the tragedienne known simply as Rachel, who dominated the Comédie-Française in the 1840s and gave her name to a run of dishes garnished with truffle and marrow in the classical repertoire, though as with most such dedications the connection to the actual dish is decorative rather than documented. It appears here because a book called High-Class Cookery Recipes is written for cooks in service to households that expected French names and French finish, and a soup like this one is almost entirely labour: three small batches of forcemeat, poached apart, for a garnish that vanishes in three mouthfuls.