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Consomme, Talma
Prepare and strain into another saucepan a consomme and keep hot. Plunge two ounces sweet almonds and two single bitter ones in a pint boiling water for five minutes; drain, peel and pound them in the mortar to a paste. Pour in two gills cold milk, mix well, then strain through a cheesecloth into a bowl. Place one egg in another bowl, adding two other yolks; briskly beat up for a minute, then gently mix in the almond milk. Season with two saltspoons salt and one saltspoon cayenne pepper, mix for a minute, then pour the preparation into three small, lightly buttered pudding moulds, place in a small frying pan, pour hot water up to half their height and set in the oven with door open for ten minutes. Remove, let cool off, unmould, cut into thin slices, add to the consomme and boil for a minute. Pour into a hot soup tureen and serve.
This is a classic garnished consommé: an almond-flavoured royale, baked as a custard, unmoulded and sliced into clear soup. The problem is the flavouring, which is a controlled toxic ingredient rather than a culinary curiosity.
- Bitter almonds are the reason to stopBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding to a paste and steeping in milk accomplishes. Raw bitter almonds are not permitted for retail sale in the United States for this reason, though older cookbooks treat them as an everyday flavouring.
- The blanching does not remove itThe blanching cannot be relied on -- Five minutes in boiling water loosens the skins; it may inactivate some of the kernel's enzyme and leach some amygdalin, but not dependably. Hydrogen cyanide is volatile, so a gentle bake and a minute in the soup will drive off some of what is released — none of it in an amount anyone can predict or control.
- Dose is unmeasurable hereCyanogenic content varies widely between kernels, so "two single bitter ones" is not a quantity anyone can assess. The total here is small, but it is divided unevenly among three moulds and then among servings, with no way to know what any one slice carries — and the margin is narrower for children.
- Bitter almond extract is not the same thingModern extract sold for baking is made from benzaldehyde, with the cyanogenic compounds removed or never present. It is a substitute for the flavour, not a licence to reconstruct this custard, and it will not behave like pounded nuts steeped in milk.
- If you want the dishRoyale garnishes for consommé are still made and still worth making. Use a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
- Reading the originalA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of milk; a saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. "Set in the oven with door open" describes a very gentle bake, the period's way of holding a water bath below simmering.
Consommés in the grand-restaurant tradition were classified almost entirely by their garnish, and each garnish carried a name — a place, a patron, a performer. Talma is generally taken as a nod to François-Joseph Talma, the tragedian who dominated the Paris stage under Napoleon and whose name attached itself to a good deal besides soup, including a style of cloak. The garnish itself is a royale: a savoury custard baked in a bain-marie, chilled firm, unmoulded and cut into slices or dice so that it floats in the clear broth without clouding it. Almond royales were a standing item in the nineteenth-century repertoire, and the pairing of sweet almonds with a couple of bitter ones was the ordinary way to get almond flavour before commercial extracts — the same trick used in macaroons, ratafias and blancmange. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, was compiling from that professional French tradition when he assembled this book, which is why a domestic-looking cookery volume carries a garnish named for a Napoleonic actor.