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Consomme Chiffonnade, Aux Fines Herbes
Prepare and strain into another saucepan a consomme, then let it gently simmer until required. Cut in very thin julienne strips six well-cleaned green lettuce leaves, six well-trimmed, clean leaves spinach and twelve thoroughly washed leaves of sorrel; place these green vegetables in a small saucepan with half ounce good butter and a teaspoon sugar; mix well, cover pan, let cook for ten minutes, stirring with fork once in a while; drain on sieve, add to consomme with two tablespoons each cooked asparagus tips, green peas and string beans cut in short pieces, a teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half teaspoon chopped chives, leaves from two branches chervil, season with teaspoon sugar, lightly mix, boil ten minutes, pour consomme in tureen and serve.
A garnished clear soup that assumes you already have a finished consommé on the stove; everything here is the garnish. The whole point is contrast between the bright greens and the clear broth, which is why the handling of both matters more than the quantities.
- Keep the consommé clearOnce strained, hold it at a bare shiver, with barely a bubble breaking. A rolling boil will cloud a clarified broth and undo the work that went into it. The final "boil ten minutes" should likewise be read as a gentle simmer.
- ChiffonnadeThe word means the leaves are stacked, rolled tight and sliced across into ribbons. "Very thin julienne strips" here is that same cut: aim for shreds about 1/8 inch wide, and cut them just before cooking so the sorrel does not oxidize.
- SorrelGarden or French sorrel is the sharp, lemony leaf the recipe wants, and it is a farmers' market item rather than a supermarket one. It collapses to almost nothing and turns olive-drab within a minute of heat — that is normal. Baby spinach with a squeeze of lemon approximates the flavour but not the texture.
- The butter braiseHalf an ounce is one tablespoon. Ten minutes covered over low heat with butter and sugar is a sweat, not a fry: the pan should never colour. Draining the greens on a sieve afterwards keeps the buttery liquid out of the clear soup.
- Two doses of sugarA teaspoon goes into the greens and a second teaspoon into the soup — about two teaspoons total for the batch. It is there to offset the acidity of the sorrel, not to sweeten the broth; taste before adding the second lot, since modern consommé is often already seasoned.
- Timing the spring vegetablesThe asparagus tips, peas and beans are already cooked, so ten minutes more in the soup will grey them. Add them in the last two or three minutes, and the herbs — parsley, chives, chervil — off the heat, once the tureen is filled.
- Chervil"Leaves from two branches" is roughly a tablespoon of picked leaves. Chervil's anise note fades fast with heat and it wilts within hours of picking; if none is available, a little tarragon plus extra parsley is closer than nothing.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how much consommé to prepare. The garnish quantities would suit something in the region of a quart and a half, which at the small first-course portions of the period would serve about six.
Chiffonnade u from the French chiffon, a rag u is a shredding cut, and by the late nineteenth century it named a whole family of clear soups garnished with ribbons of sorrel, lettuce and spinach softened in butter. Adding aux fines herbes layers on the second French convention: the standard quartet of parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon, used raw or barely warmed so their volatile oils survive. Both belong to the codified garnish vocabulary of the professional kitchen, where a single base consommé was sent out under dozens of names depending only on what floated in it. Sorrel's presence marks the recipe's age as much as its nationality: it was a common kitchen-garden green in Europe and in American gardens through the nineteenth century, valued for a sourness that came before lemons were cheap year-round, and it slipped out of general use as it slipped out of home gardens. The International Cook Book (1906), compiled by Alexander Filippini, gathered these classical formulas alongside dishes from across Europe for American households aspiring to hotel-dining-room standards.