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Parmesan Cheese Quenelle Soup
Put two ounces of butter in a saucepan on the fire, melt it and add sufficient flour to form a roux. Cook this for a few minutes, add more flour to form a soft paste and let it dry for a few minutes longer over the fire, then add the yolk of six eggs, two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, a small quantity of chicken glaze, salt, pepper and grated nutmeg to taste, and lastly a slight coloring of essence of spinach. Poach a small portion of this quenelle mixture to determine its firmness; should it be too thick add a little broth, but if too thin add a little more yolk of egg. Form it into quenelles, put these into a buttered saute pan, pour over some boiling stock and poach them about fifteen minutes.
This is not a soup but a garnish for one: small green cheese dumplings poached in stock and dropped into a clear consommé at the last moment. The written method is a professional shorthand and needs filling in.
- The hinge: poach a test piece firstThe recipe tells you to poach one small quenelle before shaping the rest, and that step is not optional. Egg yolk quantity, flour absorption and cheese moisture all vary, and the only way to know whether the mixture will hold is to cook a spoonful of it.
- "Sufficient flour" is genuinely unmeasuredTwo ounces of butter with enough flour to make what the recipe calls a soft paste is perhaps 2 to 3 ounces of flour, but the original deliberately leaves it open because you adjust by feel.
- The missing liquidA classic panade for quenelles is flour cooked in milk or stock, not in butter alone. As written you are making a very dry roux, which may be why the recipe offers broth as the correction if the test piece comes out too thick.
- Chicken glazeGlace de volaille: chicken stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets firm when cold. A teaspoon or two is enough. Commercial demi-glace or a concentrated stock paste stands in for it.
- Essence of spinachNineteenth-century green coloring, made by pounding raw spinach, pressing out the juice and warming it gently until the green solids coagulate, then draining them off. A very small amount of blanched spinach puréed and squeezed dry does the same job; the point is a faint green tint, not spinach flavor.
- Poaching temperaturePour on stock that has just come to a boil, then keep the pan below a boil, at a bare shiver. Quenelles boiled hard will swell, break up and turn tough.
- Fifteen minutes is for full-sized quenellesFifteen minutes -- The recipe gives no size for the quenelles, so the timing is hard to read; fifteen minutes suits large dumplings shaped between two tablespoons. Smaller ones will be done sooner, when they feel springy.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield and no serving instructions. Lift the quenelles out with a slotted spoon and hold them in a little warm stock until wanted.