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Consomme, Milanais
Strain a consomme, into another saucepan and keep on the corner of the range. Break three ounces spaghetti into one-inch pieces, plunge them into a quart boiling water with a teaspoon salt and boil for twenty-five minutes. Drain on a sieve, add two ounces grated Parmesan cheese to the consomme; briskly mix with a whisk while heating for two minutes. Dilute two egg yolks with a gill cream and add to the consomme, lightly mix for a minute, then add the cooked spaghetti. Pour the soup into a hot tureen and serve.
A classic egg-and-cream liaison finished with cheese and pasta. The one thing to get right is the temperature after the yolks go in.
- Do not let it boil after the yolksOnce the yolk-and-cream mixture is stirred in, the soup must stay below about 180F. A simmer will scramble the yolks and leave the consomme grainy and speckled rather than glossy.
- "The corner of the range"On a coal range this was the cooler edge, used to hold things hot without cooking. The modern equivalent is the lowest burner setting or a pan set over barely steaming water.
- A gill4 fluid ounces (half a cup) by American measure; a British imperial gill is 5 fl oz. Use heavy or light cream; both work, heavy gives a rounder body.
- How much consommeThe quantity is not given. Two quarts of strong clear stock suits 3 oz spaghetti, 2 oz cheese and this amount of liaison, and serves six to eight.
- Twenty-five minutes of spaghettiThat timing belongs to the dried pasta of a century ago. Modern spaghetti is done in 8 to 10 minutes; boiled for twenty-five it will disintegrate into the soup and cloud it.
- ParmesanGrate it yourself from a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano or a good grana. Pre-grated cheese usually carries an anti-caking agent, cellulose or starch, which can muddy a consomme that has been carefully clarified.
- Order of workHave the pasta drained and the yolks and cream already mixed in a bowl before the cheese goes into the soup. From that point the whole finish takes about three minutes and cannot be paused.
- ServingWarm the tureen and the bowls. A thin liaison-bound soup loses heat fast, and reheating it is what breaks the eggs.
In the French kitchen vocabulary that governed hotel cooking around 1900, a la milanaise signalled the presence of pasta and Parmesan, the two things Milan stood for on a menu card; the same tag turns up on macaroni timbales, risotto and breaded veal. Consommes were the pride of the professional cook, judged on clarity, so a garnish added at the last second was a way of dressing one up, while a binding of yolk and cream clouds the bowl outright.