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Gourmet's Soup
Put a large knuckle of veal into a saucepan or stockpot, together with two roasted fowls and any beef bones that may be at hand, pour in ten pints of beef stock and boil for ten minutes; carefully skim off all the scum, prepare and add the desired quantities of any vegetables that may be in season and a little pepper, and boil for five hours, by which time the liquor should be reduced to about four quarts; then skim off the fat, remove the meat and bones, clarify with the white of beaten egg, which has been beaten with a small quantity of beef stock, and boil for twenty minutes longer. Strain through a cloth into another saucepan, and add the red part of a carrot and a turnip, cut with a vegetable cutter into columns and afterward into slices about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, also two heads of celery and two leeks cut into slices, all these having been previously blanched; add also a small quantity each of sorrel and chervil, and two lettuces cut up into pieces, and boil all for another hour; then put in a little sugar, and finally about three tablespoonfuls of blanched asparagus. Place some small croutons of fried bread or pieces of toast at the bottom of a soup tureen, pour over the boiling soup and serve.
This is a consommé in the old grand-hotel manner: a double stock built on beef stock rather than water, clarified with egg white and finished with a cut garnish. Most of it translates directly; the two places it needs adjusting are the volumes and the final hour of boiling.
- The volumesTen pints is 20 cups, or 5 quarts, reducing to about 4 quarts. You need a stockpot of at least 10 quarts to hold that plus a veal knuckle, two fowls and bones. Halving the whole recipe is sensible for a home kitchen and changes nothing but the pot.
- Knuckle of vealThe veal hock or shank joint, sold split by most butchers on request. It is there for gelatine, which is what gives a consommé its body and clean mouthfeel; a pound or two of veal or beef marrow bones plus a split trotter does the same work if veal knuckle is hard to find.
- Two roasted fowlsA fowl in period usage is generally a mature bird, tougher and far more flavourful than a supermarket broiler. Two roasted 4-5 lb chickens, or the carcasses and legs left from a roast, will serve. Roasting first is not optional here: colour and flavour both come from it.
- Skim before you seasonThe ten-minute hard boil exists only to bring the scum up so it can be lifted off. After that the pot should sit at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, for the five hours. A boiling stock emulsifies its fat and turns cloudy, and no amount of clarifying afterwards fully recovers it.
- The clarificationWhisk 4-6 egg whites with a cup of cold stock, stir into the strained, degreased, cooled-down liquid, then bring it up slowly without stirring. The raft forms and sets; ladle the clear soup out through a cloth rather than pouring the pot, which breaks the raft. Twenty minutes at a simmer is right; a boil will shred it.
- "The red part of a carrot"The outer orange layer, as distinct from the paler core, which was thought coarse. Cut into cylinders with a column cutter and sliced across, it gives even discs — a plain 1/8-inch slice from a slim carrot is the same thing.
- The final hourBoiling the blanched garnish for another hour will reduce it to threads and cloud the consommé you just spent twenty minutes clarifying. Since everything has been blanched already, five to ten minutes at a simmer is enough, and the asparagus and chervil should go in at the last minute. Sorrel and lettuce collapse almost on contact.
- Sorrel and chervilBoth are still grown but neither keeps well, so look for them at farmers' markets rather than supermarkets. Sorrel brings the sour note the sugar at the end is balancing; without it, a squeeze of lemon at the finish is closer than leaving it out.
- Yield and serviceAbout four quarts of finished soup, or sixteen generous cups — this is banquet quantity. Season with salt at the very end, after all reduction is done, and serve immediately over the croutons so they do not turn to paste.
A recipe of this kind belongs to the French idiom that ruled American hotel dining from the 1890s onward, and it is a textbook consommé garni dressed up with a flattering name. The logic is that of general French professional practice: build a first stock, then use it as the liquid for a second so that the flavour is concentrated twice over, clarify to absolute transparency, and add a garnish cut with geometric precision. Clarity was the point. A clear soup demonstrated that a kitchen had the labour to skim, strain and clarify, and the vegetable columns sliced to an eighth of an inch made the same argument about the staff standing at the bench. The name looks generic rather than historical l "gourmet's" here appears to signal expense and refinement to a diner reading a menu, much as "consommé royale" or "printanier" did, and the recipe's instruction to use "any vegetables that may be in season" suggests how loosely such titles were applied in practice.