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Clear Soup
Skim off the fat from two quarts of stock, pour it into a saucepan, and put in an equal quantity of prepared carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, a bunch of sweet herbs and parsley, one-fourth pound of scraped beef, a few peppercorns, a lump of salt, and the whites and shells of two eggs. Stand the saucepan over the fire, whip the contents till boiling, then stop whipping, and let simmer for fifteen minutes over a moderate fire. Strain the soup first through a fine hair sieve, then two or three times through a jelly bag, till it is quite clear. If desired, wine may be added to the soup before serving.
This is a standard consommé clarification — the egg-white raft — written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen that assumed the reader already knew the method. A few points make it work at home.
- The hinge: stop whisking the moment it boilsThe whites and shells coagulate into a raft that traps the particles clouding the stock. Once that raft forms you must leave it alone; further stirring breaks it up and drives the debris back into the liquid, and the soup will never clear. Ladle carefully through a gap in the raft when you strain.
- "An equal quantity" is ambiguousRead literally it means two quarts of vegetables to two quarts of stock, which is far more than any modern consommé uses. It most likely means an equal quantity of the aromatics taken together as a rough measure of volume, loosely packed. A practical amount for two quarts of stock is about a cup each of diced carrot, turnip and celery plus one leek.
- Scraped beefLean beef scraped or shredded off the grain with a spoon, not ground beef with its fat. Fat is the enemy here — it re-clouds the soup. Shin or a trimmed piece of round, finely chopped, does the same job.
- Start coldThe instruction to set it over the fire and whip assumes the stock goes in cold or barely warm. If the stock is hot the whites seize instantly in strings instead of building a raft.
- Fifteen minutes is briskThat is enough to clarify, but modern practice generally simmers a consomm o minminutes to an hour or more at the barest tremble, so the raft also draws flavour from the beef and vegetables. Fifteen minutes gives you a clear liquid closer in flavour to the stock you started with.
- A moderate fire means barely movingA moderate fire -- The recipe's own word for what follows is 'simmer': on a gas or electric hob, the lowest setting that keeps one or two bubbles breaking the surface. A rolling boil will churn the raft apart.
- Sieve and jelly bagA fine hair sieve is a fine-mesh strainer; the jelly bag is a close-woven cloth. Four layers of damp cheesecloth in a strainer does the work of both. Wet the cloth first or it will absorb a surprising amount of the soup.
- Skimming the last fatBlot the surface with strips of paper towel after straining, or chill and lift the set fat. Any film of grease undoes the visual effect the whole exercise is for.
- The wineSherry or Madeira is the usual choice, a tablespoon or two per serving, stirred in off the heat so it does not cook off. Check the seasoning at the very end.
- YieldAbout a quart and a half after straining and losses to the raft: six small cups, or four as a first course.
Clear soup was the opening course of the formal American dinner in the era Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, and its transparency was the point — a consommé you could read a menu through advertised a kitchen with stock, time and labour to spare. The technique itself is French, long established in professional kitchens — the raft of egg white and lean beef, the hair sieve, the jelly bag are all part of that inherited vocabulary. Note that the recipe assumes a good stock already exists somewhere in the house; a hotel kitchen always had a stockpot going, and books of this kind treat two quarts of it as a pantry staple rather than a day's work. The optional wine at the finish — sherry or Madeira, generally — is a familiar Victorian finishing touch.