Consommé
2 pounds lean beaf. 1 small knuckle veal. 2 tablespoons butter. 1 small onion. 1 small carrot 1 stalk celery 1 bay leaf 2 quarts cold water The under part of the round of beef is the best for this soup, though any lean portions will do. Cut the beef and veal into small pieces and brown them in the butter over a hot fire. Add the cold water, onion, celery, carrot and bay leaf; simmer slowly for five or six hours in a covered kettle. Take from the fire; cool; remove the fat; strain; reheat and serve.
A classic long-simmered brown stock, printed here with a partial ingredient list — the loose-leaf page has lost the top of the column, so the beef, veal, butter and onion appear only in the method. Quantities for those are missing and worth stating plainly rather than guessing.
- The missing amountsFor 2 quarts of water, a working ratio is about 1 lb lean beef and 1/2 lb veal, 1 tablespoon butter, and 1 medium onion. The original numbers are simply not on the page.
- Why veal is in thereVeal knuckle or shoulder supplies gelatin, which gives consommé its body and the faint lip-stick texture that distinguishes it from thin broth. All-beef stock will taste right but feel thin.
- Brown properly, onceThis is the hinge. The colour and most of the flavour come from hard browning the meat in butter in a single layer — crowd the pan and it steams grey, and no amount of simmering will recover it.
- Cold water, and never a boilCold water starts the extraction slowly; a bare simmer keeps the liquid clear. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and albumen into the stock and it will never strain clear afterward.
- Five or six hours is realNot padding. That is roughly what it takes to break down connective tissue into gelatin at a bare simmer, kept well below a boil. Watch the level and top up with hot water if it drops below the meat.
- Chill to degreaseCooling in the refrigerator overnight sets the fat into a solid cap you lift off in one piece. Skimming warm stock leaves a greasy film on the surface of the finished soup.
- Clarifying, if you want true consomméThe recipe stops at strain and reheat, which gives a good brown stock. A proper consommé is then cleared with an egg-white raft; strain through a damp cloth if you prefer to skip that step.
- Yield and servingRoughly 5 to 6 cups after reduction and straining, so four to six servings as a first course. Season with salt only at the end, since reduction concentrates whatever you add early.
Consommé comes from the French consommer, in the sense of 'completed' or 'consummated'; the name is usually explained by the stock being considered finished — clarified, degreased, and needing nothing further. It was the benchmark of a cook's competence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a clear soup opened any formal dinner and cloudiness was read as carelessness. The loose-leaf format was aimed at the American housekeeper working without a brigade of kitchen staff, which may explain the streamlined treatment here: brown, simmer, chill, strain. The combination of beef for flavour and veal for gelatin is standard classical practice, generally traced to the French professional kitchens whose methods Escoffier and his contemporaries codified. The long unattended simmer also suited a coal or wood range that stayed warm all day whether you wanted it to or not.