No. 226

Consomme Comus

Consomme Comus.

A garnishing of small round rolls one and a quarter inches in diameter, made of ordinary bread dough; in these make an incision around the flat side and empty out the insides completely. Blanch some white cabbage leaves, suppressing the cores, drain them and cut them up very fine, then fry them in butter with quarter of its quantity of cooked ham cut in one eighth inch squares; moisten with a little white wine, add half its quantity of cooked, skinned and chopped up sausages; set this into the rolls, cover the tops with a layer of chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), and poach them in a slack oven. Lay them on a vegetable dish round side up; and moisten with a little good consomme, then let simmer for a few minutes in the oven; add some cooked foies-gras (goose livers) cut in three-sixteenth of an inch squares, and some round five-eighth inch slices of lettuce, blanched and cooked in consomme. Serve this with a soup tureen of consomme at the same time.

← No. 225 Consomme Colbert, with Poached Eggs Soups & Broths No. 227 Consomme Cream of Pheasants or Game →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish rather than a soup: hollowed dinner rolls stuffed with cabbage, ham and sausage, capped with forcemeat, and served alongside a tureen of clear consommé. Ranhofer assumes you have consommé and quenelle forcemeat already made and cross-references his own numbered recipes.

The hingeThe rolls must be scooped out completely, working through the flat underside as Ranhofer directs, and the filling packed in before the forcemeat cap goes on. He gives no shell thickness and does not call for drying the shells before filling.
"Slack oven"A slack or cool oven; Ranhofer states no temperature, and any modern figure is only an estimate. It is there to set the quenelle forcemeat gently without browning the bread; judge it by feel, as the recipe gives no time.
Chicken quenelle forcemeat (No. 89)A pounded chicken quenelle forcemeat from Ranhofer's own forcemeat section; check No. 89 for its actual composition. Any fine chicken mousseline passed through a sieve will serve; keep it cold and season it well, since consomme garnishes are tasted against a very clean broth.
ConsomméThe recipe stands or falls on the broth. It should be a properly clarified, well-gelatined stock served hot and crystal clear, not a thickened or cloudy one; the whole point of the composition is the contrast between limpid soup and rich garnish.
Foies-grasRanhofer means cooked whole goose liver, cut in small dice and added at the end only to warm through. Prolonged heat renders it to fat. A slice of chilled foie gras torchon diced at the last moment is the closest modern equivalent; do not let it sit in the oven.
The measurementsHis fractional inches are literal and worth respecting: rolls of 1 1/4 inches, ham in 1/8-inch dice, foie gras in 3/16-inch dice, lettuce rounds of 5/8 inch. Everything must fit on a soup spoon.
Sausage"cooked, skinned and chopped up sausages"; Ranhofer does not say what kind. "Half its quantity" is ambiguous in the original: the antecedent may be the ham or the cabbage.
Yield and serviceRanhofer gives no yield or number of servings. The garnish is laid round side up on a vegetable dish, and a soup tureen of consomme is served at the same time.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its consommé has numbered variations that differ only in garnish — the broth is a constant and the name identifies what floats in it. Comus was the Greek god of festivity and revelry, adopted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as shorthand for banqueting and masquerade; Ranhofer's naming here follows the general kitchen habit of borrowing from mythology and the stage rather than pointing to any documented dish or person. The construction — bread hollowed and stuffed, then sent to table on a vegetable dish with the tureen served alongside — belongs to an older tradition of the sop or croustade, dressed up for a restaurant that expected each course to arrive with something built by hand.