No. 238

Consomme a la Plumerey

For the Garnishing.-Have some lettuce soaked in cold water, then washed in several waters to remove all the adhering sand, blanch in plenty of water, cool off, and press out all the liquid, bend the leaves over, one third of their length at the top, trim the stalks nicely, braize them for one hour and serve them in a vegetable dish after dividing them in two, lengthwise. Have half a pint of puree of duck; the same quantity of supreme sauce (No. 547), half a pint of bouillon, twelve raw egg-yolks, and two whole eggs, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then press it through a tammy, and fill some buttered timbale molds (No. 5, Fig. 137,), with this preparation; poach them in a slack oven, unmold, cut in two crosswise, and add them to the lettuce. Crusts of bread five-eighths of an inch square by one-eighth of an inch thick, sprinkled over with butter, and browned in the oven; serve these separately; send to the table at the same time a tureen of chicken consomme; serve in each plate, half a lettuce, and one slice or half a timbale, pour over some consomme and add three croutons for each person.

← No. 237 Consomme a la Noailles Soups & Broths No. 239 Consomme Printanier with Quenelles →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnished consommé in the grand style: a clear chicken broth poured at table over braised lettuce and a slice of duck royale, with croutons passed separately. Nearly all the work is in the garnish, and the royale custard is where it succeeds or fails.

The royale must never boilThe duck-and-egg mixture is a savoury custard. Poach the filled molds gently, standing in water, in a slack (cool) oven until just set, so the surface trembles rather than puffs. Any real simmer and the yolks curdle, weep liquid and the slices will not cut cleanly.
Slack oven, and other oven wordsSlack oven -- a slack oven is a cool one, well below browning heat; Ranhofer gives no figures, and modern renderings usually put it around 300F. The croutons need only an oven hot enough to colour them in a few minutes.
Half a pintAn American half pint is one cup. So one cup each of duck purée, supreme sauce and bouillon, bound with twelve yolks and two whole eggs — a very rich ratio by modern standards, and the reason the royale sets firm enough to slice.
TammyA tamis, a drum sieve or fine cloth through which the mixture is forced with a wooden pestle. A fine chinois with a ladle, or a blender followed by a fine strainer, does the same job; the point is that no fibre or thread of egg remains.
Purée of duck and supreme sauceThe purée is cooked duck meat pounded and sieved — leg meat from a braised or confit duck works. Supreme sauce (his No. 547) is a chicken veloute finished with cream and butter; if you are not making the whole cross-referenced system, a well-reduced chicken veloute with cream is the equivalent.
Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided dariole or timbale molds, buttered well; Ranhofer specifies only his mold No. 5, Fig. 137, and gives no capacity. The instruction to unmold and cut crosswise means each mold yields two rounds, so a plate gets a single disc of royale.
An hour on the lettuce is longBlanched romaine hearts, folded and tied, braised in a little stock under a cover, are done in 25-35 minutes at a bare simmer. Braise them to tenderness, not by the clock.
Keep the consommé clearEverything is assembled in the plate for a reason: lettuce, royale and croutons all shed starch, fat or fibre. Clarify the chicken consommé, strain it through a cloth, degrease it thoroughly and pour it over at the last moment.
YieldThe royale as written makes roughly four cups of mixture, enough for a dozen or so molds and therefore twenty or more portions at half a timbale each. For eight people, make about a third of the custard and count one lettuce half, one slice and three croutons per plate.

A Little History

The name is often said to honour Armand Plumerey, the chef who completed the last two volumes of Carême's L'Art de la cuisine française au XIXe siècle after its author's death, and it is typical of the French practice of attaching a garnish permanently to a person's name. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, inherited that whole vocabulary wholesale: his consommé chapter runs to dozens of numbered variations that differ only in what floats in the bowl. The royale — a moulded savoury custard cut into shapes and dropped into clear soup — was the workhorse of that system, a way of getting the flavour of duck, game or foie gras into a broth that had to stay transparent. The elaborate assembly at the plate, with the tureen carried round separately, belongs to service à la russe, the course-by-course style that had displaced the older groaning-board arrangement by the time Ranhofer was writing.