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Consommé au Ravioli (Clear Soup with small)
(Clear Soup with small Dumplings filled with Forcemeat.) Ingredients.
Three pints of Consommé.
Two ounces of cooked Chicken Meat.
A dessertspoonful of Cream. One tablespoonful of cooked Spinach. Half an ounce of cooked Ham.
Half an ounce of grated Parmesan Cheese.
What survives here is the ingredient list only; the method has been lost in the transcription, so the shaping and cooking of the ravioli has to be reconstructed. The quantities are for a garnish, not a filling meal.
- Scale and yieldThree pints of consommé will fill about six small soup cups; note that if the book's measures are imperial that is nearer 7½ US cups than 6. The filling — 2 oz chicken, ½ oz ham, ½ oz Parmesan — is only enough for a couple of dozen very small ravioli at most, three or four to a portion.
- The consommé is the dishEverything depends on the broth being genuinely clear. A cloudy stock cannot be rescued by seasoning; it needs clarifying with egg white and lean minced meat, strained through a cloth, and skimmed of every trace of fat.
- Cook the ravioli separatelyBoiling filled pasta directly in the consommé releases starch and clouds it. Simmer them in salted water until they float and the pasta is tender, lift out, and add to the hot soup at the moment of serving.
- The forcemeatChop or pound the cooked chicken and ham to a fine paste with the Parmesan; a little of the consommé or a spoonful of thick béchamel binds it. The meat is already cooked, so the ravioli need only long enough to cook the pasta — two to three minutes for very thin sheets.
- Parmesan then and nowHalf an ounce is about two tablespoons grated. Buy a piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano and grate it rather than using pre-grated cheese, or the seasoning of the forcemeat will fall flat.
- Pasta thicknessRoll the dough until it is translucent. Ravioli meant for clear soup should be almost invisible in the cup; thick edges turn doughy and leave a raw-flour taste in the broth.
- Missing methodSince no pasta dough is specified, use a standard egg pasta — roughly 1 cup flour to one egg.
Consomm iment garnished with a named accompaniment was the backbone of the classical soup course: the same clear broth appeared as consomm iment julienne, iment la royale, aux profiteroles or, as here, au ravioli, and the garnish alone supplied the name on the menu. Ravioli have a long history in English and French cookery, and cooks writing for the professional trade treated them as one more clarifying-and-garnishing exercise rather than as a pasta dish in their own right. The tiny quantities here — two ounces of chicken, half an ounce of ham — suggest a use for cold roast trimmings. A consomm iment built on game carcases would take the same garnish happily.