No. 229

Consomme a la Dubarry

A garnishing of timbales of mushrooms prepared as follows: half a pint of mushroom puree, half a pint of bechamel sauce (No. 409), eight egg-yolks and one whole egg; season with salt and nutmeg and fill with this some low and plain, buttered tartlet molds, poach them in a slow oven, unmold, and set them in a vegetable dish with some semolina quenelles, serve the garnishing separately with a soup tureen full of game consomme and crusts of bread, five-eighths by one-eighth of an inch, sprinkled over with butter and browned in the oven.

Semolina Quenelles.-Take a quarter of a pound of butter, beaten to a cream with eight raw egg-yolks, mixing them in gradually, add to it seven ounces of semolina, salt, pepper and nutmeg, and with this preparation make some small quenelles with coffeespoons; poach them slowly for thirty minutes. They should swell up to twice their original size.

← No. 228 Consomme a la Daumont Soups & Broths No. 230 Consomme a la Duchess →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish assembly rather than a soup recipe: Ranhofer assumes you already have a clarified game consommé and a béchamel on hand, and No. 229 tells you only what goes into the tureen. Two components, both custard-based, both needing gentle heat.

The hinge: gentle heat, no browningBoth the mushroom timbales and the semolina quenelles are egg-yolk custards. Held too hot they curdle and weep, and the timbales will puff then collapse. Ranhofer gives no temperature; a "slow oven" in period terms is somewhere in the region of 250 to 325F, and his "poach them" implies the molds sit in a water bath. The quenelles want water barely trembling, never a rolling boil.
Timbale ratioHalf a pint each of purée and béchamel is one cup each, bound with eight yolks plus one whole egg. That is a very rich royale by modern standards but it sets firm enough to unmold. Strain the mixture before filling the molds.
Tartlet molds"Low and plain" means shallow, straight-sided, no fluting, so the little custards release cleanly. Buttered ramekins or a shallow muffin tin work; in a low oven in a bain-marie, roughly 20 to 25 minutes, until the centers are just set.
Semolina quenellesSeven ounces is about 1 1/4 cups of semolina to a quarter pound (1 stick) of butter and eight yolks. Shape with two coffeespoons, meaning small teaspoons, not modern measuring spoons. Thirty minutes is correct here: the semolina has to hydrate and swell, and they genuinely double.
Test one firstPoach a single quenelle before shaping the rest. If it disintegrates the mixture needs a rest in the refrigerator to firm; if it stays dense and heavy, thin with a spoonful of consommé.
Béchamel No. 409Bechamel No. 409 -- Ranhofer's bechamel is a period white sauce, thicker than a plain modern one and, as was common at the time, liable to be enriched with stock; No. 409 gives the actual formula. A stiff bechamel made with a 2 tablespoon butter and flour roux to a cup of milk is about the right consistency.
Game consomméA clarified stock from pheasant, partridge, hare or venison bones. Domestic poultry stock will not read as game; a strong roasted-bone chicken consommé with a little dried mushroom added is the nearest honest substitute.
The crustsFive-eighths by one-eighth of an inch means slender bread batons, buttered and browned in a hot oven for a few minutes. Ranhofer sends them out with the tureen of consommé.
ServingSend the consommé in the tureen, the timbales and quenelles in a vegetable dish, and let each guest add their own.

A Little History

Dishes bearing the name Du Barry commemorate Jeanne Bécu, Madame du Barry, last maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV, and in the classical repertoire the tag most often signals cauliflower, which is what Escoffier's Crème Dubarry means. Ranhofer, writing for Delmonico's in New York in 1894, uses the name more loosely, as nineteenth-century chefs frequently did: a garnish of mushroom timbales and semolina quenelles in game consommé, elegant and pale, attached to a fashionable name rather than to a fixed formula. The recipe is a good illustration of how The Epicurean is built. Almost nothing here stands alone; the béchamel is a cross-reference, the consommé is assumed, and the numbered entry supplies only the assembly, which is how a large brigade kitchen actually worked. The custard garnish itself, the royale, was a standard of the period, a way of putting body and richness into a clear soup without clouding it, and the amount of egg yolk called for reflects a moment when a clarified consommé was the measure of a kitchen's competence and garnishing it was where the chef showed off.