No. 234

Consomme a la Grammont

For the Garnishing.-A quarter of a pound of filbert nuts, pounded with half a pint of cream, when reduced to a paste, place this puree into a bowl with half a pint of supreme sauce (No. 547), and ten whites of eggs; season, press through a sieve and then set the preparation into buttered timbale molds (No. 5, Fig. 137), lay them in a stewpan, one beside the other, with sufficient boiling water to cover half the height of the mold, then poach them in a slack oven, unmold, and cut them in two across the center; arrange them in a deep dish or vegetable dish; besprinkle them with a little consomme and have also game quenelles molded in molds, the size and shape of half a bird's egg cut lengthwise; in order to make these quenelles, mix an equal quantity of quenelle forcemeat (No. 89), with game and cream forcemeat (No. 75), and turnips cut into three-eighths of an inch balls, using either a vegetable or root spoon, then blanch and cook them in white consomme.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is not a soup recipe but a garnish set: a nut royale, game quenelles and turnip pearls, all dropped into clear consomme at service. Ranhofer assumes you already have consomme, supreme sauce and two forcemeats on hand from elsewhere in the book, so read it as one component of an assembly.

The hinge: the royale must be poached, never boiledThe nut-and-egg-white mixture is a custard. Held in a water bath in a slack oven (loosely, something in the 250-300F range) it sets smooth when the center reaches roughly 170-175F; if the surrounding water simmers, the whites tighten and weep and the unmolded rounds will be spongy rather than sliceable. Keep the water barely trembling and begin checking early, as small molds set fast.
FilbertsFilberts are hazelnuts. Buy them raw, toast briefly and rub off the skins in a towel, or the puree will be gritty and speckled. A quarter pound is about 115 g, and a food processor does in a minute what the original expects of a mortar.
Half a pintIn this book half a pint is one cup, 8 fl oz. You need it twice: once with the nuts, once as supreme sauce.
Ten whites of eggsModern large eggs give roughly 300 g / 1 1/4 cups of white for ten. That is a very high proportion of white to cream, which is deliberate: the royale has to hold a clean cut and not cloud the consomme.
Supreme sauceSuprme is classically a chicken veloute finished with cream and reduced until it coats; Ranhofer's No. 547 is elsewhere in the book. Any well-made version works here; it is present for flavor and body, so it should be seasoned before it goes into the custard, since you cannot taste raw egg white.
Timbale moldsSmall buttered dariole or timbale molds; the book points to its own No. 5, Fig. 137, and gives no capacity, so use small ones. Straight-sided espresso cups or the smallest ramekins substitute. Butter them properly if you want clean unmolding, since the halves are meant to be cut across the middle and shown.
The quenellesEqual parts of the book's quenelle forcemeat (No. 89) and its game and cream forcemeat (No. 75), shaped in a mold the size of half a bird's egg cut lengthwise. Pheasant, partridge, guinea fowl or duck all serve; two spoons will shape them if you have no mold. The recipe does not say what to poach them in; poach them gently, just until firm.
Turnip ballsThree-eighths of an inch is a small melon or pea baller. Blanch them first, as Ranhofer says, to take off the raw sulfurous edge, then finish in white consomme so they carry the soup's flavor rather than diluting it.
YieldNo yield is given. The quantities suggest garnish for a large service rather than a household one. Halving the royale is straightforward; the trimmings and the split rounds are best used the day they are made.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, where a clear consomme was a blank canvas identified almost entirely by what floated in it: a named garnish was the dish. Nineteenth-century French practice attached aristocratic and diplomatic names to these garnishes wholesale, and Grammont points to the Gramont family, whose dukes were prominent in Second Empire France; as with most such titles, the connection is decorative rather than documented, and no particular Gramont is known to have invented anything here. The construction itself is orthodox: a royale, or set savory custard cut into shapes, was the standard way to add substance to a consomme without clouding it, and Ranhofer's nut version belongs to a family that also ran to purees of green pea, carrot, game and foie gras. "Filbert" is the older English name for the hazelnut, still standard in American cookbooks of the period and only slowly displaced in the twentieth century.