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Quenelles for Soups Entrees
Put into a basin the half-boiled yolks of two eggs, half their weight of hot boiled potatoes, one teaspoonful of chopped parsley, a small quantity of cayenne and salt, and the yolk of one egg, and mash all well together. Make the mixture into balls the size of cherries, using flour on the hands, drop these into a stewpan of boiling water and poach for a minute or two; then take them up with a skimmer and drop them into the soup a few minutes before serving.
A small, quick dumpling rather than the classic meat-and-cream quenelle: cooked yolk and potato bound with raw yolk, poached and floated in clear soup. The whole thing hinges on the proportions, which are given by weight and by eye.
- "Half-boiled" yolksThis most likely means yolks cooked until just set but still soft in the centre; the recipe gives no time. Fully hard yolks work but give a drier, more crumbly ball.
- The potato proportionTwo cooked yolks weigh roughly 1 to 1¼ oz, so "half their weight" of potato is something over half an ounce — a small spoonful of hot mashed potato. The mixture should be more egg than potato.
- Use a dry, floury potatoBoiled and mashed while still hot, with no butter, milk or seasoning beyond the cayenne and salt called for. Waxy potatoes hold water and the balls slacken in the poaching liquid.
- Size and shapingCherry-size means about ¾ inch across, or a scant teaspoon of mixture. Flour on the palms is essential; the paste is sticky and the balls should be rolled quickly and lightly so they stay tender.
- PoachingThe recipe says boiling water, though a bare simmer is gentler on the balls. One to two minutes is what is called for — they are set once they float and firm slightly.
- Test one firstPoach a single ball before shaping the rest. If it disintegrates, work a little flour into the mixture; if it is heavy, it has too much potato or flour already.
- Adding to the soupThey go in a few minutes before serving, to heat through only. The recipe does not specify the soup, though the separate poaching suits a clear one.
- YieldAs written this makes only about a dozen small quenelles — a garnish for two to three cups of soup. Scale up by multiples of the two-yolk base rather than guessing.
A true quenelle is a forcemeat dumpling, pounded veal, chicken or pike bound with panada and eggs and shaped between two spoons; the word is generally traced to the Alsatian-German Knödel by way of French kitchen usage, though the derivation is not beyond dispute. What Oscar Tschirky sets down here is the humbler garnish end of that family — egg-yolk balls of the sort a nineteenth-century kitchen turned out to give body and a little richness to an otherwise clear consommé, in the same tradition as royale custards, marrow balls and profiteroles for soup. Its presence in a Waldorf book is a reminder that grand hotel cookery ran on a stock of small standardised garnishes, dropped into service at the last moment. The instruction to poach separately and then transfer with a skimmer is the professional habit: it keeps anything that might cloud a consommé out of the pot.