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Ten Peppercorns
Mace. Two Cloves.
Scrape or chop up the beef very finely. Clean the vegetables, and cut them up. Carefully remove all the fat from the stock, which is now a jelly, and put it into a stewpan; add the scraped meat, the white of egg just beaten, the shell broken up roughly, and the vegetables, whisk all together over the fire until just on boiling point, then take out the whisk and let the soup boil up well; it should then be clear.
Take a clean cloth, fix it on a soupstand, and pour boiling water through it, to wash and warm it thoroughly. Pour the contents of the stewpan gently on to this cloth, let it run through slowly twice. This is consommé, and can be served as a variety of soups named according to what is served in them.
The page opens mid-ingredient-list — the peppercorns, mace and cloves of the title belong to a list whose quantities are on the preceding page — so treat this as a method for clarifying stock rather than a complete formula. The technique itself has not changed in a century.
- What you actually needFor roughly 2 quarts of cold jellied stock: about 8 oz lean beef (shin or skirt), the white and shell of one egg (the recipe's own wording is singular), one carrot, one leek or onion, a stick of celery, ten peppercorns, a blade of mace and two cloves. The book's own quantities are lost to the page break, so these are standard proportions rather than a reconstruction.
- The hingeThe whisking stops before the boil. Once the egg white and meat have set into a raft, any further stirring breaks it up and the soup will never clear. Whisk only up to the point where the surface trembles, lift the whisk out, and leave it alone.
- Cold stock, alwaysThe albumen has to coagulate slowly through the whole volume to trap the sediment. Starting from warm stock sets the egg white in strings on the bottom of the pan and the raft never forms. This is why the recipe describes the stock as having set to a jelly before it goes into the pan.
- "Let it boil up well"Read this as a gentle rolling simmer rather than a hard boil, which shatters the raft. The recipe sets no time, only the test: the liquid beneath the crust should look amber and transparent.
- StewpanThe book gives no description of the pan. A deep pan rather than a wide, shallow one suits the job: depth gives the raft room to rise and keeps its surface area small.
- The cloth and the soupstandA soupstand appears to be a frame that holds the cloth over the receiving bowl; a fine sieve set over a bowl and lined with a doubled square of scalded muslin does the same job. Scalding is not fussiness — a dry cloth absorbs the first pint of consommé that would go into the soup, and the recipe explicitly says to pour boiling water through the cloth to wash and warm it.
- Straining twiceThe recipe says to pour the contents gently on to the cloth; take the clear liquid from under the raft first and let it fall through without pressure. Passing it a second time through the same, now sediment-glazed cloth is what gives the mirror finish. Never squeeze the cloth.
- Fat and seasoningSkim any remaining beads of fat by drawing a strip of kitchen paper across the surface. Salt only at the end: reduction during clarification concentrates whatever was already there.
- Yield and serviceExpect to lose roughly a fifth of the volume, so 2 quarts of stock gives about six cups of consommé. It is served very hot in cups, and the garnish gives it its name — royale for custard dice, julienne for shredded vegetables, brunoise for fine dice.
Clarified consommé was a test of skill. A professional kitchen in the late Victorian and Edwardian period was often said to be measured by its consommé: a cook who could send out a soup you could read newsprint through was reckoned to have mastered stockpot, skimming and patience all at once, and the dish appears in books like this one as a foundation rather than a dish in its own right. The method rests on the fact that egg albumen begins to set from about 140F and coagulates over a range above that, drawing suspended protein and sediment upward with it — a bit of practical chemistry cooks used long before anyone described it that way, and the scraped lean beef is there to supply extra soluble protein to the raft as well as flavour. The closing line, that consommé is "a variety of soups named according to what is served in them," follows long-established classical French practice, in use well before Escoffier: one perfected base, then dozens of names on the menu depending on whether the cup held custard dice, shredded vegetables, pearl tapioca or a spoonful of sherry.