No. 239

Consomme Printanier with Quenelles

Consomme Printanier aux Quenelles

Put two quarts of clarified consomme on to boil. Prepare a garnishing composed of tender carrots, turnips, celery roots, cucumbers, asparagus tops, string beans cut lozenge-shape, also small flowerets of cauliflower; cut the roots either olive or ball-shape, using a vegetable-spoon, blanch them in salted water, then let fall to a glaze several times in a little broth until they are cooked, then put them as soon as done into the soup tureen, adding the cauliflower, asparagus and some green peas previously boiled in salted water. Besprinkle this garnishing with a pinch of sugar, pour the broth over, and finish with small quenelles, three-eighths of an inch in diameter, having a quarter of the quantity of the other garnishing. Serve the soup with slices of toasted bread instead of the quenelles; when needed for a plain printanier, and for a consomme printanier royale, employ the same garnishings, adding slices of timbales royale (No. 241).

← No. 238 Consomme a la Plumerey Soups & Broths No. 240 Consomme a la Remusat →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you already have clarified consommé and a quenelle forcemeat on hand; this entry is really a garnishing formula. The work is all in the knife and in the glazing pan.

"Let fall to a glaze"This is glacer: simmer the blanched roots in a shallow pan with a little broth until the liquid reduces to a syrupy film that coats them. Doing it "several times" means adding a splash more broth and reducing again, which builds gloss without overcooking. Note that Ranhofer mentions no butter here, and his pinch of sugar goes over the garnish in the tureen rather than into the glazing pan.
Cut each vegetable to its own shapeCarrots and turnips are turned olive-shape or cut into balls with a vegetable-spoon (a parisienne scoop). Beans are cut on the diagonal into lozenges, cauliflower broken into small florets. The point is that every piece is small enough to sit on a spoon.
Cucumber needs careRanhofer groups it with the other roots, but it collapses far faster than turnip and turns watery if glazed as long, so peeling, seeding, blanching briefly and adding it later is a reasonable precaution rather than something the recipe directs.
Quenelles must never boilThese are small poached forcemeat dumplings, here piped to about 3/8 inch. Poach them in barely trembling salted water or broth around 175-180F; a rolling boil breaks them apart and squeezes them tough. Poach separately and add to the tureen at the last moment.
ProportionsThe quenelles are a quarter of the quantity of the other garnish, as Ranhofer specifies. Two quarts of consomm e would serve something in the region of six to eight as a first course.
Each vegetable cooked apartPeas, asparagus tips and cauliflower are boiled separately in salted water and added at the end. Cooking them together with the roots muddies both the colours and the clarity of the broth.
Keep the consommé clearKeep the consomm e clear -- Drain the glazed vegetables well before they go in the tureen, and pour the broth over rather than cooking anything in it, as Ranhofer directs. Glaze carried into the soup will cloud it.
Cross-referencesNo. 241, timbales royale, is the savoury custard baked and cut into shapes for the royale version. Ranhofer also offers slices of toasted bread in place of the quenelles for what he calls a plain printanier, without saying why.

A Little History

Printanier means simply "of the springtime," and the name promises the first tender roots and shoots of the year rather than any fixed list; the garnish in Ranhofer's version is the classic French repertoire of turned vegetables, peas and asparagus tips that came to define the term. Consomm es like this belonged to the era of long, formally structured dinners, when a clear soup opened the meal and its garnish was a small display of knife work meant to be seen through the broth. The Epicurean (1894) collects the kitchen practice of Delmonico's in New York, where Charles Ranhofer cooked for decades, and its soup chapter reads the way a professional brigade worked: one clarified stock, and dozens of numbered garnishes cross-referenced to one another, so that a single day's consomm e could appear under many different names. Quenelles - forcemeat lightened with panada and egg, shaped small and poached - were a standard of that kitchen.