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Consomme, Celestine
Strain into another saucepan a consomme and keep hot. Place in a bowl one and a half ounces sifted flour; add two raw eggs and one and a half gills cold milk. Season with a saltspoon salt; briskly mix with a whisk for five minutes. Then pass the preparation through a strainer into another bowl.
Heat in a large frying pan half tablespoon melted butter, drop in four tablespoons of the preparation, well spread all over the pan, and cook for two minutes on each side; turn the pancake on a large dish and keep warm; then proceed the same with the rest of the paste. Cut the pancakes into thin julienne-shaped strips and drop them into the consomme; boil for five minutes, pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A clear soup finished with shredded pancake — the batter is a thin crêpe, not a fritter, and everything depends on getting it thin enough to cut into fine threads.
- The hinge: a very thin batterOne and a half ounces of flour (about 1/3 cup, 42 g) to two eggs and 3/4 cup milk gives a batter close to heavy cream. If it coats the whisk it is too thick; thin it with a spoonful more milk. Thick pancakes cut into strips that swell and turn doughy in the broth.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup (180 ml). A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- Straining the batterPassing it through a strainer is not optional fussiness — it removes flour lumps and the chalazae from the eggs, both of which show up as blemishes in a pancake this thin.
- RestingThe recipe moves straight from whisking to the pan. Half an hour's rest lets the gluten relax and the flour hydrate, and the crêpes tear less.
- Pan and timingTwo minutes a side is long for a crêpe of this thinness in a hot pan; expect closer to 45–60 seconds on the first side and 30 on the second. Cook them pale gold, not brown — colour clouds the look of the finished consommé.
- Cutting the julienneStack the cooled pancakes, roll them into a loose cylinder and slice across at about 1/8 inch. Cold pancakes cut far more cleanly than warm ones.
- Five minutes' boilingThat is longer than the strips need and will cloud a carefully clarified consommé. Add them to simmering broth, give them a minute to heat through, and serve at once.
- YieldAt four tablespoons a pancake the batter should make roughly four to six crepes in a large (say 9-inch) pan. The recipe never says how much consomme it is garnishing, so servings are a guess: this is enough shredded pancake for six or so bowls.
Consomme Celestine belongs to the long list of classical French clear soups named for their garnish, and its shredded pancake is the same idea as the Austrian Frittatensuppe, where strips of thin pancake are dropped into beef broth; which way the borrowing ran, if either, is not documented. The name is generally traced to the tradition of naming consommes after people, places or saints rather than to any documented Celestine, and nineteenth-century kitchen manuals list dozens of such variants distinguished only by what floats in the bowl: royale (savoury custard cut in shapes), julienne (fine vegetable threads), brunoise, vermicelli. An international collection like this one includes them because a well-clarified consomme was the mark of a serious kitchen, and the garnish was the cook's chance to show a little polish at almost no cost -- a few spoonfuls of egg batter turned into something worth naming.