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Quenelle Soup
Pour one teacupful of water into a saucepan, set it over the fire, add a small lump of butter and a pinch of salt, stir well until it boils, add sufficient flour to form a fairly thick paste, turn it out on to a dish, and stand it on a cool place until cold. Cut one-half pound of lean veal into small pieces and pound them thoroughly in a mortar, adding by degrees two ounces of the above paste, and three or four ounces of butter; beat well together, then add the yolks of two eggs and the white of one, and season to taste with grated nutmeg, pepper and salt. Rub the whole through a fine hair sieve, adding a little cream, and with the aid of two teaspoons form the mass into quenelles. Place them side by side in a saucepan, pour in carefully sufficient boiling stock to cover them, and cook gently for a few minutes. Pour the necessary quantity of well flavored stock or broth into a tureen, add the quenelles and serve hot. The stock in which they were cooked may also be poured in if desired.
A classic panade-based veal forcemeat, poached and floated in clear broth. The whole thing hinges on temperature and on not letting the poaching liquid boil.
- The paste is a panadeOne teacupful is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz; "sufficient flour" is left to the cook, so add it gradually over low heat until it forms a fairly thick paste that pulls away from the pan in a smooth ball. Let it go completely cold before it goes into the meat, as the recipe directs, or the butter softens and the quenelles are more likely to break up in the stock.
- Mortar work, or a food processorHalf a pound of lean veal pounded to a paste in a mortar is several minutes of hard work. A food processor does it far faster, but keep the meat, butter and bowl cold and pulse rather than run continuously so the mixture stays an emulsion.
- The hair sieveA fine hair sieve was a horsehair-mesh drum sieve; a fine nylon drum sieve or a stiff rubber spatula against a fine-mesh strainer gives the same result. The step is not optional if you want the smooth, almost custardy texture the dish is known for.
- Butter proportionsThree or four ounces of butter to eight ounces of veal is very rich by modern standards. Start at three ounces; more will taste luxurious but makes the quenelles fragile.
- Poach, never boil"Cook gently" means the stock should barely tremble, around 170-180F. At a rolling boil the forcemeat swells, splits and turns spongy. A few minutes means about 5-8 for teaspoon-sized quenelles; they are done when they float and feel firm at the centre.
- Test one firstPoach a single quenelle before shaping the rest. If it disintegrates, work in another spoonful of the cold panade; if it is heavy and dense, loosen with a little more cream.
- Shaping with two spoonsDip both teaspoons in hot water, scoop with one and smooth the top with the other to form a small oval. Wet spoons keep the mixture from dragging.
- YieldThe quantities should give a couple of dozen or so small quenelles, several to a bowl. Serve in a strong, well-clarified broth; the poaching liquid will be slightly cloudy, and the recipe leaves adding it optional.
Quenelle is generally traced into French from Alsatian German Knodel, a dumpling, though the derivation is not certain; by the nineteenth century the word meant something quite specific: a pounded forcemeat of veal, chicken or pike, lightened with panade and egg, shaped between two spoons and poached. Careme and later Escoffier treated quenelles as one of the fundamental garnishes of classical cookery, appearing in soups, in vol-au-vents, and as the body of the Lyonnais quenelles de brochet. The dish's appearance in Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book (1896) reflects a grand American hotel kitchen that was French in method and staffing, with a brigade that had the labour to spend a long spell at a mortar for a garnish that disappears in two bites. The hair sieve and the pounding are the tell -- this is a pre-machine technique.