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Consomme, Bourdaloue
Prepare a consomme. Strain into another saucepan and keep simmering. Cut in short julienne strips one medium carrot, one turnip and the green parts of two leeks, place in a small saucepan with half ounce butter, half teaspoon sugar, three saltspoons salt and a gill water; cover the vegetables with lightly buttered paper, place lid on pan, cook five minutes on range, then set in oven thirty minutes. Remove, drain vegetables and add them to the consomme. Crack one fresh egg in a bowl, add one yolk, then sharply beat with a whisk, add one and a half gills cream. Season with two saltspoons salt, half saltspoon cayenne, and half saltspoon grated nutmeg. Sharply whisk for a minute. Strain this through a cheesecloth into three buttered, individual pudding moulds, lay them on a tin, pour hot water up to half their height, set in oven with the door open ten minutes. Remove and let cool off, unmould, cut into quarter-inch-square pieces, add them to consomme. Pour the consomme into a soup tureen and serve.
This is a classic garnished consommé: clear broth finished with a braised vegetable julienne and diced royale, the savoury baked custard that gives the soup its little golden cubes. The custard is the whole job, and it is the part the original describes most loosely.
- The unitsA gill is half a cup, so the vegetables get 1/2 cup water and the custard 3/4 cup cream. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, which makes 3/4 teaspoon salt for the vegetables, 1/2 teaspoon salt in the custard, and a scant 1/8 teaspoon each of cayenne and nutmeg.
- The consommé itselfThe consommé quantity is not given because the book treats the consommé as made separately, to its own recipe. Something in the region of 1 1/2 to 2 quarts of clarified beef or chicken consommé would suit the three custard moulds specified.
- Oven temperaturesFilippini names none. Braise the vegetables at about 325-350F; bake the custards at 300-325F, no higher. The instruction to leave the oven door open is a crude way of holding the temperature down, and a low setting does the job better.
- The hinge: do not let the custard reach a simmerRoyale sets at around 175-180F. If the water bath bubbles, the custard curdles and weeps and will not cut into clean cubes. Keep the water hot but still, and check for a set that wobbles as one piece.
- Ten minutes is optimisticSmall moulds of egg-and-cream custard at a gentle heat take 20-30 minutes, not ten. Judge by feel rather than the clock, then chill the custards thoroughly before unmoulding; warm royale tears when you try to dice it.
- Buttered paperThe paper laid directly on the vegetables is a cartouche. Parchment does the same work: it holds the steam in so the julienne cooks in the small amount of butter and water without colouring.
- Straining the custardPassing the beaten egg and cream through cheesecloth removes the albumen strands and any foam, which is what keeps the finished dice smooth and free of bubbles. Do not skip it, and do not whip so much air in that you cannot strain it out.
- Assembly and holdingAdd the vegetables and the diced royale to the hot consommé at the last moment and do not boil it afterwards. Cloudy broth or broken custard both come from the same mistake.
Consomm\u belongs to the long roster of named clear-soup garnishes that French kitchens codified in the nineteenth century, when a consommé was identified not by its broth, which was more or less standard, but by what was floating in it: Brunoise for a fine dice, Célestine for shredded crêpes, Bourdaloue for the combination of vegetable julienne and diced royale seen here. Where the name comes from is unclear; the rue Bourdaloue in Paris, named for Louis Bourdaloue, the seventeenth-century Jesuit preacher, is the traditional account given for the pear tart of the same name, but there is no documented link to the consommé. Royale, the baked custard cut into shapes, was part of the professional repertoire, and its appearance in a general household book like this one reflects the era's habit of setting restaurant technique in front of the domestic cook and trusting her to keep up. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, wrote from exactly that professional tradition, which is why the recipe assumes a pot of consommé is already at hand and spends its detail on the garnish instead.