No. 242

Consomme a la Sevigne

For the garnishing, butter some timbale molds (No. 3, Fig. 137), and fill them with the following preparation: one pint of the puree of the white of chicken made with equal parts of chicken and rice, cooked in consomme, the whole passed through a sieve, and moistened with one gill of supreme sauce (No. 547), eight egg-yolks, and one gill of cream, seasoning with salt and nutmeg. Set the timbales in a sautoire with boiling water reaching to half their height, and poach them in a slack oven; then let get partially cold, and unmold; and cut them crosswise through the center. Lay them in a vegetable dish with a little good consomme and some boiled green peas, serve separately, but at the same time, a soup tureen of chicken consomme.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garnish recipe more than a soup recipe: the consommé itself is assumed, and what Ranhofer is teaching is a chicken royale, the savoury custard cut into shapes and floated in clear broth. Everything depends on the custard setting smoothly.

The hinge: the water must never boilThe hinge: keep the bath below a boil once the molds are in -- Ranhofer has you pour boiling water into the sautoire to half the height of the molds, but the poaching itself happens in a slack oven, where the water should sit at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil. A royale is an egg custard, and water at a hard boil will curdle it into a grainy, weeping mass; held gently (in modern terms somewhere around 170-180F) the set will be silky enough to cut clean edges.
"A slack oven"The coolest working oven of a coal range, roughly 250-300F. Combined with the water bath this is a gentle poach, not a bake. Expect 25-40 minutes depending on mold size; the custard is done when the center barely trembles and a knife tip comes out clean.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The recipe uses two of them, one of supreme sauce and one of cream.
Timbale moldsSmall straight-sided metal molds; 3-4 oz dariole molds or ramekins do the same job. Butter them properly and line the bases with buttered paper if you want a clean unmolding.
Supreme sauce (No. 547)A chicken velouté finished with cream and butter, reduced until it coats. If you are not making the whole book, a thick, well-reduced chicken velouté with a little cream is the sense of it. It is there for body and gloss, not for flavour of its own.
The puréeEqual parts poached chicken breast and rice, the rice cooked in consommé so it carries flavour, then pounded and forced through a sieve. A food processor followed by a fine tamis or drum sieve gets you there faster; the sieving is not optional if you want the custard smooth.
Eight yolks to a pintThat is a very firm, rich set by modern standards, deliberately so, because the custard has to unmold, chill, and be sliced without collapsing. Do not reduce the yolks unless you intend to spoon the garnish rather than cut it.
Cooling and cutting"Partially cold" means fully set but not refrigerator-cold. Custard cut warm tears; custard cut fridge-cold tastes of nothing. Cut crosswise, and warm the slices through in a little consommé before serving.
Yield and serviceThe recipe states no number of covers; a pint of puree plus yolks and cream will garnish somewhere in the region of eight to twelve bowls, but that is an estimate, not Ranhofer's. The custard and peas go to the table in a vegetable dish, the hot consomme in its tureen alongside, and the two are combined in the bowl.

A Little History

Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long run of consommés distinguished from one another almost entirely by their garnish — Royale, Sévigné, Souveraine, one after another. The technique itself is the royale, a poached savoury custard cut into rounds, dice or fancy shapes, which was the standard way of dressing a clear soup in the classical French repertoire and remained so through Escoffier. The name honours Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, the seventeenth-century letter-writer, whose name was attached to a whole family of nineteenth-century dishes; as with most such dedications the connection to the woman is honorific rather than historical, and nothing in the preparation is documented as hers. What the recipe really shows is how much labour a single clear soup could absorb in a large brigade kitchen: a chicken poached and pounded, rice cooked in stock, a velouté made and reduced, a custard poached, chilled and cut, all so that a few pale shapes could float in a broth that was itself a day's work.