No. 228

Consomme a la Daumont

A garnishing of dome-shaped timbales decorated with truffles and filled with a marechale mousseline (No. 912); then poach in a slow oven and serve separately, some blanched turnips and cut into balls three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and cooked in white consomme; small pate a chou (No. 132) balls, with parmesan cheese, the size of green peas, and fried a fine color, some blanched chervil (pluche), and rice cooked in white broth. Serve all the garnishing in a vegetable dish, and a tureen of chicken consomme at the same time.

← No. 227 Consomme Cream of Pheasants or Game Soups & Broths No. 229 Consomme a la Dubarry →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish assembly rather than a soup recipe: Ranhofer assumes you already have chicken consommé on hand and cross-references the forcemeat and choux paste elsewhere in the book. Read it as four separate small preparations that meet at the table.

What you actually need to makeA mousseline forcemeat (No. 912, called here "marechale") in small dome moulds decorated with truffle; turnip balls; tiny cheese choux fritters; plain rice. The consomme itself is assumed.
"Poach in a slow oven"The timbales go into a gentle oven, in practice standing in a water bath, until just set; Ranhofer gives no temperature or timing, though a slow oven is conventionally reckoned at somewhere near 300F. A mousseline that boils will curdle and weep; the water must never go above a shiver.
Pate a chou, No. 132Ordinary choux paste with grated Parmesan worked in. Piped or dropped the size of green peas and fried, not baked, to "a fine color"; no fat temperature is given, and they must be fried through or they collapse.
Turnip ballsThree-eighths of an inch is a small Parisienne scoop, or pare them by hand. Blanch first to take off the sharpness, then finish in white consomme (a pale, uncoloured poultry consomme) so they carry flavour rather than dilute the soup.
Pluche of chervilSimply the leaflets stripped from the stems, dropped in boiling salted water for a few seconds and refreshed. Add at the last moment; chervil's anise scent is quickly lost in heat.
ServiceThe garnish goes to the table in a vegetable dish and the hot consomme in a tureen, so each guest gets the trimmings crisp and the fritters unsoaked. Assembled in advance the choux balls turn to paste.
YieldNone is given here. For eight, count roughly 6 oz consomme per person, one timbale, and a scant tablespoon each of turnip, rice and fritters.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York under Charles Ranhofer, and its consomme section runs to dozens of entries that differ only in garnish - the clear soup is a fixed base and the name belongs to what floats in it. The style a la Daumont is generally traced to the ducal house of Aumont, whose name also attached to the attelage a la Daumont, a four-horse driving style in which the horses are driven by postilions; like Dubarry, Soubise or Colbert, it functioned less as a description than as a label of rank borrowed by nineteenth-century French cooking. What the entry really shows is the logic of a brigade kitchen: the elaborate result is assembled only at the moment of service.