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One Egg (Dessertspoonful of Flour)
One dessertspoonful of Flour.
One tablespoonful of Milk.
Seasoning. Put the soup on to boil. Mix the egg, flour, milk, and seasoning together like a batter. Pass this batter through a very fine funnel or strainer into the boiling soup. It should look like threads.
Consommé d'Orléans.
Ingredients.
One quart of Consommé.
Quarter pound of Quenelle Meat.
Divide the quenelle meat into three portions ; make one a nice green with spinach colouring, another red with beetroot colouring or coral, then shape the quenelles in teaspoons and poach as usual; there should be an equal number of red, green, and white quenelles. Serve these in the consommé.
Two consommé garnishes printed as one entry: egg threads spun into boiling soup, and the three-coloured quenelles of Consommé d'Orléans. Both are finishing touches for a clear soup you have already made.
- The missing eggThe first recipe lists no egg among its ingredients because the egg is in the title — one egg, one dessertspoonful (2 teaspoons) of flour, one tablespoon of milk.
- Threads, not scrambled eggThe hinge is the pour. Beat the batter until perfectly smooth, then dribble it in a thin stream through a funnel, a piping bag with a fine tip, or the holes of a colander held above the pot. Poured in a mass it sets into curds instead of threads.
- Boiling is right hereUnusually for egg cookery, the soup should be at a rolling boil so each thread sets on contact. Ten to fifteen seconds is enough; then draw the pan off the heat and serve at once.
- Quenelle meatVictorian quenelle forcemeat is raw veal, chicken or fish pounded to a paste with a flour-and-milk panada and cream, then sieved. A food processor does the pounding and sieving in one step. A quarter pound gives roughly eighteen to twenty-four small quenelles, six or eight of each colour.
- The colouringsSpinach colouring is spinach leaves pounded and their juice heated until the green solids separate out — or simply a spoonful of very thick spinach purée. For the red the recipe offers beetroot colouring or 'coral' — the roe of a hen lobster, pounded and sieved.
- Poaching "as usual"Shape between two wet teaspoons and slide into salted water or light stock held at 170-180F, well below a simmer. Five to eight minutes, until they float and feel firm. Boiling water breaks them apart.
- Keep the consommé clearPoach the quenelles separately and lift them into the hot consommé to serve. Cooking them in the soup itself clouds it and undoes the clarification.
Both of these belong to the long list of classical garnishes that gave a clear soup its name: the consomm ound floated in it decided what the menu called it.