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Consomme, Colombo
Prepare a consomme, strain it into another saucepan and keep simmering. Lightly butter four individual pudding moulds. Break two fresh eggs in a bowl, add the yolk of another, thoroughly beat them with a whisk, then pour in one and one-half gills of cream. Season with three saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and half a saltspoon grated nutmeg, and sharply mix until well thickened. Then strain half of the preparation into two moulds. Reduce a gill of tomato sauce in a saucepan, to the quantity of a tablespoon and add to the bowl. Mix well then strain this into the other two moulds. Place the four moulds on a small tin, pour hot water in the tin up to half the height of the moulds, set them in the oven with the door open for ten minutes. Remove, let slightly cool off, unmould, cut them in slices and place in a soup tureen. Pour the consomme over. Sprinkle the leaves from two branches of chervil over and serve.
This is a clear soup with a royale garnish — two savoury custards, one plain and one tomato, baked in a water bath, unmoulded and sliced into the tureen. The custard is the whole dish; the consommé is the setting.
- The hinge: gentle heat, no boilingA royale sets at custard temperature and curdles above it. Keep the water bath below a simmer and use a moderate oven, around 325F, baking until the centres are just firm to a light touch. The original gives no temperature; leaving the oven door open was presumably a way of holding the heat slack, though the recipe does not say so.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. One and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup; a gill of tomato sauce is 1/2 cup, reduced here to a single tablespoon of concentrated purée.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons of salt is 3/4 teaspoon, which is right for this volume; a full quarter teaspoon of cayenne is aggressive by current taste, and an eighth is enough to leave the consommé clean.
- TimingTen minutes will not set individual moulds of this size in most modern ovens. Expect 20 to 30 minutes at 325F, depending on the depth of the moulds, and start checking early rather than trusting the clock.
- Strain twiceThe recipe strains the custard into the moulds for a reason — chalazae and any thread of cooked egg will show as flecks in a garnish that is meant to be smooth and opaque. Straining the consommé through a cloth matters just as much, since the point of the dish is clarity.
- Unmoulding and slicingLet the custards cool until barely warm before turning out, then cut into neat slices, dice or diamonds with a thin knife wiped between cuts. The slices go into the tureen and the hot consomme is poured over; the custard should never be reheated in the soup.
- ChervilTwo branches means two sprigs, leaves picked and scattered whole at the last moment. Chervil's anise note fades with heat; if none is to be had, a little flat parsley with a few tarragon leaves is closer than parsley alone.
- YieldFour moulds serve four as a first course.
The royale is one of the standard garnishes of French classical soup cookery: an unsweetened baked custard, cut into shapes and dropped into a clear consommé, giving it a little richness without clouding the broth. Cooks varied it by what went into the custard — tomato, purée of peas, chicken, carrot — and the resulting soups were then named, often after places, patrons or the chef's own fancy, which is how a book like this ends up with dozens of consommés distinguished by little more than their garnish and a proper noun. The two-colour treatment here — half the custard left pale, half tinted and flavoured with reduced tomato — belongs to the same impulse, the appearance of the garnish in the tureen being no small part of the point.