No. 217

Consomme Antonelli,' Lean or Fat

Consomme Antonelli, en Maigre ou en Gras

Use consomme of either chicken or fish, the following quantity being for twelve persons. Keep on the side of the range, three quarts of chicken consomme for fat, or fish broth for lean; thicken one or the other with three spoonfuls of tapioca, and cook for twenty-five minutes, skimming it nicely. Choose sixteen raw truffles, having all of them, if possible, one inch in diameter; peel them and mark with a column tube of five-eighths of an inch, a place for a cover; cut off the round cover using the tip of a small knife, and keep the piece aside; scoop out the insides with a vegetable spoon, leaving the surface as thin as possible, then salt them, and fill the empty space with a puree of goose livers (foies-gras) mixed with cream and egg-yolks, or if intended for lean, with a puree of salmon, bechamel, cream and egg-yolks. Close the opening with the piece laid aside, and arrange one beside the other in the bottom of a stewpan, just large enough to contain them; moisten them to half their height with consomme and Madeira, cover with buttered paper, and let the water boil, then place it in a slack oven for fifteen minutes, so as to poach the preparation inside the truffles. Serve these truffles in a vegetable dish with sixteen fine cocks' kidneys if for fat, or if for lean, sixteen pike quenelles the same shape as the kidneys; serve also a garnishing of small stars cut from noodle paste, blanched and cooked in consomme.

← No. 216 Consomme a l'Andalouse Soups & Broths No. 218 Consomme Balzac →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Ranhofer garnish soup built around sixteen stuffed truffles, given in two versions — en gras (meat) and en maigre (fish, for fast days). Most of the work is in the truffles; the consommé itself is barely more than a clear broth lightly bound with tapioca.

The hinge: the truffles are the dishEverything depends on scooping the truffles thin without piercing them and poaching the filling gently so it sets rather than boils out. Work with a small melon baller and stop while the wall still feels firm; a torn truffle will empty itself into the pan.
"Slack oven"About 275–300°F. The buttered paper and the shallow bath of consommé and Madeira are there to keep the truffles at a bare poach, not to brown them.
Spoonfuls of tapiocaA 'spoonful' here is usually read as a tablespoon. Three tablespoons of small pearl or granulated tapioca to three quarts of broth gives the faint body he wants — the consommé should still be clear enough to read through, not a pudding. Skim as it cooks.
Column tubeA plain round cutter, here 5/8 inch, used to score the lid before it is lifted with a knife tip. A small pastry cutter or the wide end of a piping tip does the same job.
Raw trufflesFresh black winter truffles an inch across, sixteen of them, is an extravagance measured in hundreds of dollars today. Preserved whole truffles in jars are the practical substitute; frozen ones scoop badly. There is no honest imitation.
Foies-grasHere it means the raw or lightly cooked liver puréed with cream and yolks so it sets in the oven, not a ready-made terrine. A block of mousse-style foie gras loosened with cream and bound with a yolk behaves much the same way.
Cocks' kidneysCockscombs and cocks' kidneys were standard 19th-century garnishes and are effectively unobtainable now. The maigre alternative — sixteen pike quenelles piped to the same small oval shape — is the one a modern cook can actually execute, and works alongside the meat version too.
Noodle-paste starsAn egg pasta dough rolled thin, stamped into stars, blanched in water, then finished in consommé so they do not cloud the soup. Blanching first is not optional if you want the broth clear.
Yield and serviceTwelve portions: the clear soup at table, the truffles and their garnish passed separately in a vegetable dish. Reckon on about a cup of consommé and one truffle per person.

A Little History

En maigre ou en gras — lean or fat — is the older French kitchen's way of covering both sides of the church calendar in a single entry, and Ranhofer, who cooked at Delmonico's in New York from 1862 and published The Epicurean in 1894, still catalogued his repertoire that way. A fish-broth version with salmon purée and pike quenelles could be served on a Friday or in Lent; the chicken consommé with foie gras and cocks' kidneys served every other day of the year. The dish belongs to the class of clear soups whose reputation rested entirely on the garnish: the broth is deliberately restrained so the truffle can be the event. Names like Antonelli were attached to such garnishes freely and are often untraceable; Ranhofer records the name without explaining it.