No. 240

Consomme a la Remusat

Mince up fine one small white onion, one carrot and one turnip, half a celery-knob, and the white part of a leek; fry these very slowly with some butter, season, and moisten with a little broth, then cook them covered, letting the liquid fall several times to a glaze, and until the vegetables are well done; press them through a tammy, and put this puree into a bowl. For one pint, add ten raw egg-yolks and one whole one, half a pint of cream, a pinch of sugar, salt and nutmeg; pour this preparation into buttered timbale molds (No. 4, Fig. 137) and poach by putting them into a stewpan with boiling water to half their height. When done cut each timbale in two through the center crossways and place them in a vegetable dish with some small chicken forcemeat quenelles, colored white, red and green, and pushed through a cornet on a baking sheet into the shape of beads, a quarter of an inch in diameter, having the same quantity of each color, and poach them in boiling salted water; drain them, and add them to the slices of timbale; serve separately and at the same time a soup tureen of chicken consomme.

← No. 239 Consomme Printanier with Quenelles Soups & Broths No. 241 Consomme a la Royal →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish recipe more than a soup: a dense vegetable royale, cut and floated in clear chicken consommé alongside three-colored quenelle beads. The consommé itself is assumed to be on hand.

The hinge: poach, never boilA custard this rich curdles if the water simmers hard. Hold the bain-marie water well below a bubble, around 170-180F, and the royale is set when the center barely trembles. Ranhofer writes "boiling water," but a royale set at a true rolling boil will pit and weep, so read it as water brought to the boil and then allowed to settle.
Celery-knobCeleriac, not celery stalk. Knobs vary widely in size, so take half of a medium one and expect a few ounces of peeled root.
"Letting the liquid fall several times to a glaze"Moisten with a splash of broth, cook it away until the pan filmss and the vegetables begin to catch, then moisten again. Three or four repetitions build sweetness without color — keep the heat low enough that nothing browns, since this royale must stay pale.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine worsted strainer through which purée was forced with two people twisting a stick. A drum sieve or a blender followed by a fine chinois gets you there faster and smoother.
The egg ratioTen yolks plus one whole egg to a pint of purée and half a pint of cream is very rich by modern standards and sets firm enough to slice, which is the point. If it is too solid for your liking, the classic dial is fewer yolks, not more cream.
Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided dariole or timbale molds; Ranhofer points to his own No. 4, Fig. 137 rather than giving a capacity. Butter them well, and a disc of parchment in the bottom helps clean unmolding before slicing.
Coloring the quenellesRanhofer specifies only white, red and green and leaves the means unstated; plain forcemeat gives the white and sieved spinach or spinach green the green, while the red would have come from any of the reds a period kitchen kept to hand. Piped from a paper cornet as 1/4-inch beads and poached in barely simmering salted water, they cook in well under a minute -- a rolling boil breaks them.
Yield and serviceThe quantities given make roughly a quart of custard, a substantial amount of garnish; Ranhofer gives no number of servings. His arrangement is deliberate: garnish in a vegetable dish, clear soup in its own tureen, sent out together and combined at the table.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long run of consommés distinguished from one another almost entirely by their garnish — printanier, royale, à la Rémusat and dozens more. The Rémusat name is generally taken to honor the French family of that name, most prominently the memoirist Claire de Rémusat and her son Charles, the nineteenth-century statesman; like most such dedications in the grand repertoire it commemorates a patron or a personage rather than a place or a technique, and the recipe would have been recognizable to any French-trained kitchen as a royale with a beaded quenelle garnish. The labor is the real signature: pressing vegetables through a tammy, piping hundreds of quarter-inch beads in three colors in equal quantity, and slicing set custards crossways all presume a brigade of cooks and a clientele that would notice.