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Duchess Consomme
Butter a baking sheet, cover with four ounces of chou-paste, cook in the oven for six minutes, then cover the paste with forcemeat in small lumps laid at a little distance apart. Cut the paste into twelve equal sized pieces, each piece holding a lump of the forcemeat, pour one quart of boiling consomme over and serve.
This is a garnish formula rather than a soup recipe: the consommé is assumed to be already made, and the instructions describe only what floats in it. Read as written it omits a second baking, which is the one thing that has to be put right.
- Chou-pasteP e à choux, the standard flour, butter, water and egg paste used for gougères and profiteroles. The four ounces is presumably four ounces of finished paste, spread thinly over the sheet.
- Oven heatChoux needs a hot oven, 400–425F, to set and puff. Six minutes at that heat only firms the surface; the paste is nowhere near done at that point.
- Cook the forcemeat throughThe text stops after the forcemeat is laid on and never sends the sheet back to the oven. Poultry or veal forcemeat will not cook from a ladle of boiling consommé poured over it in a plate. Return the sheet to the oven until the paste is dry and coloured and the forcemeat reaches 165F, then cut and portion.
- ForcemeatMost likely a pounded farce of raw chicken or veal bound with egg white and cream, essentially a quenelle mixture, though the recipe does not specify. A fine food-processor mousseline is the modern equivalent.
- CuttingCut the baked sheet into twelve pieces, one lump of forcemeat to each, while it is still warm.
- ConsomméOne quart of clear, well-seasoned stock, brought to a full boil so it is still steaming when it reaches the table. Cloudy stock defeats the point of the dish.
- YieldNot given; a quart of consommé and twelve pieces suggests about four servings of three pieces each, as a first course.
Consommés in the grand-hotel repertoire were distinguished almost entirely by their garnish, and the name told the kitchen what to drop in the bowl rather than how to make the broth. Escoffier's Guide Culinaire lists dozens of them. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, was written from the standpoint of a maître d'hôtel in a kitchen where, one imagines, a cauldron of consommé stood ready all service long; the recipes assume that base and record only the variation. The terse, elliptical style here — no temperature, no second baking, no seasoning — is typical of professional notes set down for cooks who already knew the drill.