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Consomme Brunoise with Semolina
Prepare a consomme, strain it into another saucepan and keep simmering until required. Cut in exceedingly small square pieces a carrot, turnip, small onion, the white part of a leek, a branch celery and quarter very small cabbage, place them in a saucepan with an ounce butter, a half teaspoon salt, teaspoon sugar and gill of the consomme. Cover vegetables with a lightly buttered paper, place lid on pan, boil on range for five minutes, then set in oven for forty-five minutes. Remove from oven, lift up paper, add all contents of pan to consomme, with two ounces well-washed and thoroughly drained semolina, lightly mix, let boil for fifteen minutes, frequently mixing meanwhile, pour soup into a tureen and serve.
A classic garnished consommé: the vegetables are sweated slowly in their own steam under a paper lid, then dropped into clear broth thickened lightly with semolina. Nothing here is difficult, but the dice and the way the grain goes in decide whether it looks like a restaurant soup or a muddy one.
- Brunoise means the cutA brunoise is an even dice of about 1/8 inch (3 mm), made from vegetables first cut into julienne. Uniformity matters more than exact size, since the pieces must all be tender at the same moment and must stay suspended in the broth rather than sinking as chunks.
- A gillIn American measure, half a cup, 4 fl oz; the British imperial gill is 5 fl oz. It is there only to keep the vegetables from catching, not to boil them.
- The buttered paperThis is a cartouche: a round of parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered on the underside and laid directly on the vegetables. It traps steam and returns condensation, so the dice cook through without browning or drying.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. This is a gentle sweat rather than a roast, so a low to moderate oven, somewhere in the region of 300-325F, is a reasonable modern reading. At forty-five minutes the dice should be tender and still holding their corners.
- Quantity of consomméQuantity of consomme -- The original does not say. As a rough working figure, 2 oz of semolina and this volume of vegetables suit something on the order of 2 quarts of clear stock, which would give six to eight servings as a first course.
- Washing the semolinaThe rinse was presumably to remove loose flour that would cloud the broth; older grain may well have carried more of it than modern packaged semolina, which does not need rinsing. If you do rinse, drain it very thoroughly, as stated, or the wet grain will clump on contact with the hot liquid.
- Adding the grainRain the semolina in slowly through your fingers while the consommé moves at a bare simmer, stirring the whole time. Dumped in at once it sets into lumps that no amount of later mixing will break up.
- Fifteen minutes, with a caveatCoarse semolina wants the full fifteen; fine grades are done in eight to ten. Cook only until the grains are no longer chalky at the centre. Past that the starch keeps swelling and the soup turns to porridge, which defeats the point of having clarified the stock at all.
- SeasoningThe teaspoon of sugar is not for sweetness but to round out the turnip and cabbage. Season the finished soup after the semolina has cooked, since the grain absorbs salt as it swells.
Brunoise is one of the fixed garnishes of the French classical repertoire, taking its name from the cut rather than from any single dish, and consomme brunoise appears under that heading in the classical French kitchen manuals. Semolina -- coarse durum wheat middlings, the same material as pasta -- was a common addition to clear soups in French and Italian kitchens, where semolino soups were familiar nursery and convalescent food. The buttered paper laid directly on the vegetables gives the steady, moist, low heat that a sweat requires. Once a cook could turn out a clear consomme and a clean brunoise, dozens of named soups followed from the same two skills.