No. 359

Raviole and Pearl Soup

Potage aux Ravioles et aux Perles

Place four quarts of good consomme into a saucepan, and after it boils skim it well. Blanch in boiling water for five minutes, two ounces of Nizam pearls, drain, and add them to the boiling consomme; cook until they become transparent, which will take about twenty minutes, pour the soup into the soup tureen, adding some poached ravioles (No. 158), and serve at the same time a plateful of grated parmesan cheese.

← No. 358 Noques or Quenefes Soup Soups & Broths No. 360 Woodcock Soup →

For the Modern Kitchen

A clear consommé garnished with two starches at once — tapioca pearls and small filled pasta. Ranhofer assumes you have both the consommé and the ravioli already made; the recipe proper is only the twenty minutes of poaching.

Nizam pearls"perles du Nizam" were a commercial starch pearl sold in the nineteenth century, the name apparently borrowed from the Nizam of Hyderabad; sources differ on whether they were tapioca or another starch. Small pearl tapioca is the usual substitute; use the small size, not the large boba pearls, which will not cook through in twenty minutes.
Quantity and scaleTwo ounces of dry pearls to four quarts of consomme is a light garnish. Four quarts serves roughly twelve to sixteen as a first course; a quarter of the recipe is a sane household batch.
Blanch first, and mean itThe five-minute blanch in plain water washes off surface starch. Skip it and the tapioca will cloud a consommé you spent hours clarifying — this is the hinge of the dish.
Cooked until transparentTransparent is the doneness cue, not the clock. Small pearls may be clear in ten to fifteen minutes rather than twenty; a white opaque core means underdone, and pearls left sitting in hot broth keep swelling and thickening it.
The ravioliNo. 158 is the raviole recipe this soup cross-references. Poach the ravioles separately so their starch stays out of the soup. Any small filled pasta works; cook it apart and add it to the tureen at the last moment.
ConsomméConsomme -- "Good consomme" here means a clarified, well-seasoned stock, not commercial broth. Season it fully before the pearls go in.
ServingThe grated Parmesan goes to the table on its own plate, never stirred into the pot. Ladle so each bowl gets both pearls and ravioli, and serve at once — the soup thickens as it stands.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a full record of that restaurant's repertoire, running to more than a thousand numbered recipes cross-referenced to one another, as this one is to No. 158. Garnished consommés like this were the standard opening of a long service menu: the broth itself was the achievement, and the garnish — here two, a pasta and a starch pearl — announced how much work had gone into the meal ahead. What exactly the "perles du Nizam" were, and how the borrowed princely title came to be attached to them, is not something the recipe settles. Pairing them with Italian-style ravioli and Parmesan does at least show a French kitchen in an American city drawing on Italian technique when it suited the plate.