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Consomme, Russe
Prepare a consomme, but when cutting the vegetables, have in addition three medium beetroots and two tablespoons freshly grated, very fresh, sound horseradish. Strain the consomme through a cheesecloth into another saucepan. With a small Parisian potato scoop, scoop out all you can from a good-sized Russian turnip, place in a saucepan with half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar and a pint of the consomme, and boil until soft, or thirty-five minutes; then add to the consomme, add the leaves from two branches chervil, boil two minutes, pour into a soup tureen and serve.
A clear beef consommé tinted and flavoured Russian-style. The recipe assumes you already have a consommé in progress, so the instructions here are really about what to add and when.
- The baseThe recipe assumes a consommé already in progress; no quantity is given here. The beetroot and horseradish go in with the other vegetables during the simmer, not at the end, so their flavour is extracted and then strained out.
- Beetroot and colourThree medium beets are likely to give a garnet cast rather than the deep magenta of borscht, and clarification will strip some of it. Steeping a little raw grated beet off the heat at the end and straining it out is one way to hold the colour.
- Horseradish"Freshly grated, very fresh, sound" is not decoration in the original: jarred horseradish is packed in vinegar and would sour the broth. Fresh root also loses much of its heat once cooked, so the two tablespoons are less than they sound.
- Parisian potato scoopA parisienne scoop, now sold as a melon baller. Use the small end and cut the balls from a peeled turnip; the trimmings can go into the consommé pot.
- "Russian turnip"Probably the large yellow-fleshed winter turnip, i.e. swede or rutabaga, under an older name, though the usage is not firmly documented. A large white turnip works and cooks faster.
- Cooking the turnip ballsThirty-five minutes will reduce ball-sized turnip to mush. Simmer gently and start testing at 10 to 12 minutes; they should hold their shape when lifted on a spoon. Cook them in a pint of the consommé as directed, then return that liquid to the pot so nothing is lost.
- ChervilThe leaves only, added for the final two minutes; longer and the aniseed note disappears. If chervil is unavailable, flat parsley with a few tarragon leaves is the nearest substitute, though not the same thing.
- Yield and serviceNo yield is stated. Serve very hot in warmed bowls or cups, with the turnip balls divided among them; sour cream, though obvious, is not part of this recipe and will cloud the broth.
Clear soups were commonly catalogued by nationality in this period, and "Russe" signalled the flavours a French-trained kitchen associated with Russia: beetroot, horseradish, root vegetables, sometimes sour cream at the table. This is in effect a borscht translated into the vocabulary of classic consommé work, stripped of its cabbage and its cloudiness and reduced to a tinted, clear broth with a neat garnish of scooped turnip. The parisienne scoop that shapes those little spheres was standard professional equipment, and the same tool produced potatoes à la parisienne, though which name came first is not established. Such national consommés belong more to the international hotel dining room, where a menu was expected to gesture at the whole of Europe, than to any Russian household.