No. 192

Clarified Game Consomme

Consomme de Gibier Clarifie

Butter the inside of a very thick saucepan, cover the bottom with sliced onions, and lay on top three pounds of broken knuckle of veal and eight pounds of game, such as partridges, quails, pheasants and young rabbit, also half a pound of legs and pinions or bits of poultry, moisten with a pint of stock, place it on a moderate fire, and cover the saucepan; let steam and fall to a glaze, then dilute with half bottle of white wine, and ten quarts of stock or water. Bon, then skim and season with salt and two pepper corns for each quart of liquid, two cloves, also half a pound of carrots, one ounce of parsley roots, half a pound of leeks, two ounces of celery, the whole minced. Remove all the bones from two very fresh young rabbits; put these in with the stock and boil all for four hours; strain through a sieve and put it back into the saucepan; chop up fine the flesh from the rabbits with as much lean beef meat, mix in with it two whole eggs and dilute with half a bottleful of white wine. Skim off all the fat from the broth and stir in the chopped rabbits, continuing stirring for one minute, then let come to a boil, move it from the hot fire, and boil slowly and unceasingly for one half hour more; after the consomme is very clear, strain it through a silk sieve or through a napkin.

← No. 191 Clarified Fish Consomme Soups & Broths No. 193 Clarified Lent Vegetable Consomme →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a professional-scale clarified game consommé from Delmonico's kitchen: roughly eleven quarts of liquid and eleven pounds of meat before clarification. Quartering or eighthing it gives a manageable domestic batch, and the proportions hold.

Scale it downDivide by eight and you get about 6 oz veal knuckle, 1 lb game, 5 cups stock or water, a splash of white wine, and a handful of the vegetables. Scale the clarification meat and eggs in the same proportion.
"Bon" is a misprintThe word in the 1894 text should read "Boil." Bring it up, then skim before seasoning, as the instruction intends.
The glaze stage is the flavourButtering the pan, covering it, and letting the meat "steam and fall to a glaze" means sweating the bones and birds until their juices run out, reduce, and stick to the pan bottom as a brown film. Deglazing that film with the wine is where most of the depth comes from; stopping short of it gives a pale, thin soup.
Never let the raft boil hardThis is the hinge. Stir the chopped rabbit-and-beef-and-egg mixture in only until it is dispersed, then stop. Once the raft coagulates and rises, any rolling boil breaks it up and clouds the consomm" and unceasingly" means a bare tremble rather than a rolling boil.
Modern rendering of the seasoningTwo peppercorns per quart works out to about 20 whole peppercorns for the full batch — restrained by design, since crushed pepper muddies a clear soup. Two cloves total, not two per quart.
Legs and pinionsPinions are the wing tips. Any collagen-rich poultry trim — wing tips, necks, feet — serves the same purpose, which is body rather than flavour.
Sourcing the gameFarmed quail and pheasant are widely available; wild partridge and rabbit less so. Frozen game works, and mixing two or three species is closer to the original intent than using one. Check wild birds carefully for shot before they go in the pot.
StrainingA silk sieve means the finest cloth available. Damp muslin or a coffee filter set in a strainer does the job; ladle the consommé out from beneath the raft rather than pouring the pot, which drags sediment through.
ServingAs a clear soup, allow about a cup per person; the full recipe serves forty or more.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent over thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working reference set down in print — which is why the quantities assume a brigade and a stockpot the size of a bucket. The numbered consommés run in a deliberate sequence: fish, game, then a Lenten vegetable version, so a kitchen could produce a clear soup for any day of the calendar. Clarifying with lean chopped meat and egg is the classic French method codified in the nineteenth century, and it does two things at once: the albumen coagulates and traps suspended particles, while the fresh meat added at the end restores flavour lost during the long first boil. Clarity of this order was widely treated as a mark of a well-run kitchen.