No. 222

Consomme Careme, Lean or Fat

Consomme Creme en Maigre ou en Gras

For Fat.—Have chicken consomme, thickened with arrowroot, allowing one spoonful for each quart, and diluted in half a gill of Madeira wine. Spread over a sheet of buttered paper, a layer of cream forcemeat (No. 75), one-eighth of an inch thick, poach it in a slack oven, then let get cold, and cut it in lozenge-shaped pieces; prepare crusts half an inch square, or else round shaped six by one-eighth high, and fried in butter. A printanier composed of small vegetables, trimmed either with a column, or else a vegetable spoon, using carrots, turnips, and string-beans, blanch and cook them in white broth.

For Lean.—Serve a fish consomme thickened with arrowroot and a garnishing composed of frog quenelles; a small printanier trimmed into squares, and each vegetable blanched separately and then cooked in fish consomme; crusts of bread cut round shaped, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, by an eighth of an inch in thickness, laid over with butter and browned in the oven.

Frog Quenelles.—Pound one pound of frog's meat and rub it through a sieve; lay it aside; pound also five ounces of rice flour panada (No. 122) with five ounces butter, adding it in three different parts. While still continuing to pound, season with salt, red pepper and nutmeg; add the frog meat, pound again, then rub it all forcibly through a sieve. Mix in with it one whole egg, and two yolks, working them in well, then try the forcemeat and rectify it if necessary (see No. 60). With this forcemeat make some olive shaped quenelles, poach and add them to the rest of the garnishing.

← No. 221 Consomme a la Britannia Soups & Broths No. 223 Consomme Celestine →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has stock, forcemeat and panada on hand, so this entry is really an assembly plan with two garnish sets. Read it as: clear soup, lightly bound, plus three separate garnishes cooked apart and dropped in at the last moment.

The hinge: bind, don't thickenOne spoonful of arrowroot per quart gives a consomme that clings faintly to the spoon and nothing more. Slurry it in the Madeira, add it to soup at a bare simmer, and take it off as soon as it clears; arrowroot held at a boil breaks down and the soup goes thin and slightly slimy.
A gill and a spoonfulHalf a gill is 2 fl oz (60 ml) of Madeira. "One spoonful" in The Epicurean is generally taken to mean a tablespoon, so figure about 1 tablespoon arrowroot per quart, which is on the light side by design.
A slack ovenFor poaching the sheet of cream forcemeat, read 275-300F. The layer is an eighth of an inch thick and set in minutes; it should stay pale and just firm, never browned or puffed, or it will not cut cleanly into lozenges.
En maigre and en grasThese are the Lenten and non-Lenten versions of one soup, not two recipes. "Lean" means no meat stock and no meat garnish: fish consomme, frog quenelles, vegetables blanched in the fish consomme itself.
PrintanierSpring vegetables cut small and uniform. The "column" is a small round cutter, the "vegetable spoon" a Parisienne scoop; a melon baller and a knife do the same work. Blanch each vegetable separately so the carrot does not tint the turnip, then finish them in the broth that matches the soup.
PanadaNo. 122 is a stiff paste of rice flour cooked in liquid and dried out over heat, used to give quenelles body. It must be cold before it is pounded with the butter, and the butter goes in in three additions to keep the emulsion from splitting.
Frog meatA pound of picked frog leg meat is a great many legs; frozen frog legs from an Asian grocer are the practical source, and skinless chicken thigh or pike makes an honest substitute in the same quantity. The forcemeat needs to be sieved twice, as written, or the quenelles will be stringy.
Testing the forcemeatNo. 60 is the book's cross-reference for trying and rectifying a forcemeat: poach a small piece to check seasoning and texture before shaping the lot. Poach the finished quenelles in barely trembling liquid, around 170-180F; a real simmer will blow them apart.
Yield and serviceThe recipe gives no yield; judge the number of servings from the garnish quantities, allowing about a cup of consomme each. Put the lozenges, quenelles, vegetables and croutons in the warmed cup or plate and pour the soup over at the table so nothing softens.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894; the numbered cross-references throughout are the book behaving like a working manual rather than a domestic cookbook. The dish name is conventionally taken to honour Antonin Careme, the early nineteenth-century chef whose codification of French cooking Ranhofer's generation still treated as authoritative, though the text as transcribed here reads "Creme". The pairing of a fat and a lean version reflects the Catholic calendar as it operated in the great restaurants: an identical dish had to be available on fast days, so the meat stock became fish stock and the chicken forcemeat became frog. Frogs' legs were associated with Delmonico's, though the claim that the restaurant introduced them to American fashionable dining is repeated more often than it is documented.