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Consomme, American
Prepare a consomme, strain into another saucepan and keep simmering. Cut into small star-shaped pieces one each peeled red carrot, white turnip, small truffle and Spanish sweet pepper, with the white of a hard-boiled egg. Place carrots and turnips in a small saucepan with a pint of the consomme, and let slowly boil for twenty minutes, then pour into the consomme, add the other articles and two tablespoons cooked green peas. Pour in a half gill sherry, boil for five minutes, pour into a soup tureen and serve.
This is a garnished consommé in the French classical manner: the soup itself is made elsewhere in the book, and what follows is the garnish. Everything depends on keeping the broth clear, so the vegetables are cooked apart and only added at the end.
- The base"Prepare a consomme" assumes the book's own clarified beef broth. A good clear beef or veal stock, degreased and clarified with egg white and lean ground beef, gives the same result; unclarified stock will look cloudy and defeat the point of the dish.
- Half a gill of sherryA gill is half a cup, so a half gill is 2 fl oz, about 1/4 cup. Use a dry fino or amontillado, not cream sherry.
- Star-shaped piecesCut the vegetables into thin slices first, then stamp them with a small aspic or truffle cutter. Uniform thin slices matter more than perfect stars, since the pieces should cook evenly and float.
- Cooking time for the garnishTwenty minutes at a slow boil will turn thin carrot and turnip cutouts to mush. Five to eight minutes at a bare simmer is enough for slices about 1/8 inch thick; test one and pull them while they still hold their edges.
- Spanish sweet pepperMost likely a pimiento; the jarred kind is already cooked and skinned, so drain and rinse it before cutting, and add it with the truffle rather than boiling it.
- TruffleA fresh black truffle is a luxury purchase; a small tinned or jarred truffle works for the garnish, whose job here is colour contrast. If neither is available, leave it out rather than substituting truffle oil, which will smear the surface of a clear soup.
- The egg whiteAdd the hard-boiled white with the pepper and peas and give it only the briefest heating. Held at a boil it toughens and clouds the broth.
- "Red carrot"Almost certainly an ordinary orange carrot; period books often distinguished red carrots from paler varieties.
- YieldThe recipe does not state how much consomme to prepare; only the pint used to cook the carrots and turnips is specified. Serve very hot in warmed cups; a clear soup loses heat fast.
The International Cook Book came out of the Delmonico's tradition, and this entry follows the classical French practice of naming a consommé for its garnish rather than its broth: consommé Julienne for matchsticks, Brunoise for dice, Royale for custard. "American" here is the stars, cut from carrot, turnip, truffle, pimiento and egg white in five contrasting colours, with the green peas and sherry rounding out the bowl. Garnished consommés of this kind are often said to have been the standard opening of a formal American dinner from the 1880s through the First World War, when clarity was the measure of a cook's skill; the fashion faded with the long multi-course menu itself, and cutting vegetable stars by hand now reads as the extravagance of labour it was, in a kitchen with staff to spare.