Home › The World's Kitchen › Consomme, Massina
Consomme, Massina
Prepare, strain and keep simmering in a saucepan a consomme. Have one and a half gills cream in a small saucepan, place on the fire and as soon as it comes to a boiling point dredge in three tablespoons chestnut flour, sharply whisk while adding it, then let boil five minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile; remove to the table, season with two saltspoons salt, half saltspoon cayenne pepper and half saltspoon grated nutmeg, add the yolks of two eggs and two tablespoons sherry; mix well one minute. Lightly butter four individual pudding moulds, strain preparation through a cheesecloth into the moulds, place them in a small tin, pour hot water up to half their height and bake in a moderate oven with the door open ten minutes. Remove, let stand in a cool place five minutes, unmould, cut in slices quarter-inch thick, and place in a soup tureen. Pour two tablespoons good sherry and one tablespoon truffle liquor in the consomme, boil two minutes, pour in the soup tureen over the chestnut custard and serve.
This is a clear consommé garnished with a baked chestnut custard cut into slices — what a French kitchen would call a royale. The custard is the whole exercise; the consommé only has to be hot, clear and well seasoned.
- The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: two saltspoons salt is 1/2 teaspoon, and the cayenne and nutmeg are 1/8 teaspoon each.
- Oven temperature and the open doorA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F. Leaving the door open would have held the heat down so the custard sets without curdling; in a modern oven, set it to 300-325F and keep the door shut, relying on the water bath.
- The stated ten minutes is shortThe stated ten minutes may be short -- Four small moulds of thickened cream and yolk may not set through in ten minutes at that heat, though the base is already cooked and thick. Bake until the centres are firm to a light touch and a knife comes out clean. A custard that has not set will not slice.
- Chestnut flourSold as farina di castagne in Italian groceries and online, sweet and faintly smoky, and not interchangeable with chestnut purée or wheat flour. Buy it fresh; it goes rancid and bitter within a few months of milling.
- Whisk hard, then strainChestnut flour lumps instantly in hot cream. Add it in a thin stream against a fast whisk, and take the straining through cheesecloth seriously — it is what makes the finished custard smooth enough to slice cleanly.
- Yolks off the heatLet the thickened cream cool for a few minutes before the yolks go in, or they will scramble in the pan. The two tablespoons of sherry loosen it again for straining.
- Truffle liquorThe liquid from a tin of preserved truffles. A teaspoon of bottled truffle juice, or the soaking liquid from dried mushrooms, stands in; truffle oil does not.
- Keep the consommé clearAdd the sherry and truffle liquor and bring it barely to a boil — a hard, prolonged boil clouds a clarified consommé and cooks off the wine. Slice the custard on a wet knife and pour the hot soup over it at the table.
- YieldFour moulds, so four servings as a first course.
The royale — unmoulded and cut into slices, dice or fancy shapes and dropped into clear soup — was one of the fixed ornaments of the nineteenth-century soup repertoire, and the reason so many nineteenth-century consommés carry a proper name: the broth is essentially the same, and the garnish is what earns the title. Chestnut flour points to Corsica, Tuscany and the Ligurian hills, where chestnuts were milled into flour as a bread grain long before they were a luxury, and where the sweet, slightly earthy meal was cheap peasant food; putting it in cream with egg yolks, sherry and truffle liquor is exactly the sort of promotion a hotel kitchen liked to perform on a rustic ingredient. The name is presumably a personal or place dedication in the usual manner of such menus, though the book itself offers no explanation.