No. 235

Consomme a la Hongroise

For this consomme make some of the following biscuits; beat twelve egg-yolks in a vessel, whip the whites to a stiff froth and mix them lightly with the yolks; also four ounces of sifted flour and two ounces of grated parmesan; season with pepper, nutmeg and powdered parmesan; spread this evenly on a sheet of paper, keeping it three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness and cook in a slack oven. Detach the paper, and cut the biscuit up into lozenges an inch and a half long by three-quarters of an inch in width. Besides this, prepare another garnishing with half a pint of onion puree and the same quantity of cream, six egg-whites, salt, paprika and nutmeg; with this fill some timbale molds (No. 4, Fig. 137), stand them in a sautoire, with boiling water, to half their height and poach in a slack oven; unmold, and divide in two, longitudinally. Make some small potato quenelles in the shape of a three-eighth of an inch ball; poach them in boiling salted water. Place the timbales and the quenelles in a vegetable dish, cover with consomme and serve the biscuits separately the same time as the soup.

Potato Quenelles.-Put ten ounces of puree of potatoes in a saucepan and dry thoroughly, working continuously to avoid burning. When it detaches from the pan, add to it two ounces of butter; season with salt and nutmeg, add four raw egg-yolks and mix in gradually two ounces of pate a chou (No. 132).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish recipe rather than a soup recipe: Ranhofer assumes you already have clear consomme on the stove, and gives you three things to put in it. Read it as an assembly sheet and it becomes straightforward.

You need a consomme firstThe recipe never tells you to make one. Have about 6 cups of well-clarified beef or chicken consomme hot and ready before you begin; everything else here is garnish that must go into the bowl at the last moment.
"Slack oven"The book gives no temperatures; "slack" is one of its cooler settings, conventionally glossed at somewhere around 275-300F, though Ranhofer elsewhere also calls for a "very slack" oven. Both the cheese biscuit sheet and the timbale custards want that low heat: the biscuit should dry and set pale rather than colour, and the custards will curdle if pushed hotter.
The seasoning line is garbledThe text says season with "pepper, nutmeg and powdered parmesan" after already adding grated parmesan. In a dish titled a la hongroise, and given that the custard below is seasoned with paprika, powdered paprika may well be what was meant; the repetition looks like a slip in the text.
Sautoire and timbale moldsA sautoire is a straight-sided shallow pan. Standing small molds in it with boiling water to half their height is simply a water bath; small ramekins, dariole molds or metal timbale cups all work, set on a folded towel so they do not rattle.
The custard is a royaleOnion puree, cream and egg whites only, no yolks, gives the pale set custard the French kitchen calls a royale. It is done when the centre barely trembles, about 20-25 minutes for small molds; overcooked, it weeps and the halved slices fall apart.
Potato quenelles are pommes dauphine doughDry potato puree, butter, yolks and a little pate a chou is the standard dauphine mixture. Ten ounces of puree is about 285 g, roughly 1 lb of potatoes before cooking. Poach the balls in barely simmering salted water, not a rolling boil, or they disintegrate.
Cutting the biscuitDetach the paper while the sheet is still warm; cooled, it sticks and tears. Three-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm, and the lozenges finish at roughly 4 cm by 2 cm.
Timing at the tableGarnishes go into the bowls and the hot consomme is poured over; the biscuits are passed separately so they stay crisp. Assemble immediately before serving, since the quenelles absorb broth and the royale slices soften.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Twelve yolks makes a large biscuit sheet, likely more than enough for a dozen servings; for a dinner of six you could halve the biscuit and custard quantities and judge the potato mixture as you go.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summation of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organised the way a professional brigade worked: consommes are numbered, and each numbered variation is really a set of garnishes hung on the same clarified stock. A la hongroise, in the French repertoire of the period, signalled paprika, and often onion and cream with it, which is exactly what the royale here contains. Hungarian cookery had entered the grand restaurant vocabulary through Vienna and Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. The three-part garnish, a cheese biscuit passed separately, a moulded custard sliced to show its colour, and small poached potato dumplings, is characteristic of the era's clear soups, where the broth itself was deliberately plain and all the interest was suspended in it.