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Consomme with Noodles
Prepare and strain into a saucepan a consomme, Plunge into a quart boiling water with a light teaspoon salt two ounces noodles about two inches long. Cover the pan and boil for twenty minutes. Drain on a sieve and add to the consomme, boil for five minutes, pour the soup into a hot soup tureen and send to the table with about three tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese separately.
A clear soup garnished at the last minute, and the whole point of the method is keeping it clear. Two details in the original need adjusting for modern pasta.
- Cook the noodles apart, alwaysThe separate pot of salted water is not fussiness. Boiling noodles directly in consommé releases starch and clouds a stock that took hours to clarify. Drain them well, then give them their five minutes in the soup only to heat through.
- Twenty minutes is far too longSuch a long boil suggests a much thicker, thoroughly dried noodle than what is sold today. Commercial dried egg noodles or fine tagliatelle need 4 to 7 minutes; check the packet and pull them a minute early, since they finish in the consommé.
- Quantity of consomméThe original assumes you already have a batch on hand and never says how much. Two ounces of dry noodles (about 55 g) suits roughly 1.5 quarts of consommé serving four to six as a first course; more than that and the soup stops being a clear broth with garnish.
- Consommé, specificallyNot simply stock. Consommé is a strong broth clarified with egg white and lean minced meat, then strained through cloth. If you are using a good homemade stock instead, strain it through a coffee filter or several layers of muslin so the finished bowl reads clear.
- Seasoning the noodle waterA "light teaspoon" of salt in a quart is a moderate seasoning, lighter than much modern pasta-water advice. Keep it restrained here; the consommé is already seasoned and the noodles carry water with them into the bowl.
- Parmesan on the sideSending the cheese separately is deliberate. Stirred in, it clumps and leaves fat on the surface; passed at the table, each diner adds a pinch that dissolves in their own bowl. Grate it fine, and grate it fresh.
- The hot tureenThe recipe specifies a hot tureen, and a thin clear soup does not hold heat well. Warm the tureen and the bowls with hot water and dry them just before serving, or the soup arrives tepid.
Clear soup with a starch garnish was the backbone of formal service in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: a single well-made consommé would be run out under a dozen names depending on what was dropped into it at the last moment, whether royale custard, julienned vegetables, tapioca or, as here, noodles. The Parmesan and the name mark this as the Italian version of that exercise, close to the pasta in brodo eaten across northern Italy.