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Consomme, Royal
Prepare and strain a consomme into another saucepan. Crack in a bowl one egg and the yolk of another, beat with a whisk for one minute, then add a gill of the consomme; lightly mix. Season with a saltspoon salt and a half saltspoon white pepper, mix again, then strain the preparation through a cheesecloth into three lightly buttered pudding moulds; lay into a small frying pan, pour hot water up to half their height, set in the oven with the door opened for ten minutes. Remove, take up the mould, let cool off. Unmould, then cut the royal into thin slices and add to the consomme, boil for one minute, pour into a tureen and serve.
A royale is a savoury egg custard, baked, chilled, sliced and dropped into clear soup as a garnish. The whole point is a custard firm enough to cut cleanly without a trace of bubble or weep, so the heat must stay low.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe open oven door is presumably the original's way of keeping the heat down. A moderate oven, around 300F, with a water bath will do the same; pull the moulds as soon as the centre is just set and a knife comes out clean. Ten minutes is optimistic for anything but very shallow moulds; check at ten, then every few minutes. Any simmering in the water bath and the custard goes honeycombed and will crumble when sliced.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. With one whole egg plus a yolk that gives a rich custard that sets firm enough to cut into strips or diamonds.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. So a quarter teaspoon salt and an eighth teaspoon white pepper for this quantity, adjusted to how well seasoned the consomme already is.
- Straining twiceStrain the egg mixture through cheesecloth as directed, and skim any foam off the surface in the moulds. Bubbles left in the custard show as holes in the finished slices.
- Pudding mouldsSmall ramekins, dariole moulds or a shallow buttered tin all work. A shallower vessel cooks faster and more evenly; setting a thin quarter-inch layer in a small tin and cutting it into diamonds is a common classical treatment.
- Do not boil it in the soupThe instruction to boil the consomme for a minute with the royale in it will fray the custard and cloud the broth. Bring the consomme to a bare simmer, add the slices, and let them heat through off the boil.
- Cool before unmouldingLet the custard cool to room temperature, or chill it, before turning out. Warm royale tears; cold royale slices.
- YieldThree small moulds will garnish roughly four to six cups of consomme, which is about four servings of clear soup; the recipe itself does not say how much consomme it assumes.
Royale is the standard French garnish for clear soups, and a consomme sent out with cubes or diamonds of it is still called consomme royal on classical menus. It is generally traced to the nineteenth-century rule that a consomme must arrive perfectly transparent, which rules out anything starchy or floury floating in it; a baked custard of egg and the consomme's own broth adds body and a decorative shape without so much as a fleck of cloud. Kitchens of the period made a great many variants by tinting the custard with tomato, spinach puree, or a puree of game or poultry, then cutting the set slabs into stars, crescents and lozenges. That the book gives it as a separate entry reflects how such garnishes were treated: the clear soup was the foundation, and the name on the menu came from whatever was dropped into it at the last moment.