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Royale for Soups
Crack a fresh egg in a bowl, add one egg yolk and sharply mix with a whisk for one minute, then pour in one gill broth and a gill cream. Season with three saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne and a very little grated nutmeg, sharply mix until well thickened. Lightly butter four individual pudding moulds, then press the preparation through a sieve into four moulds, lay them in a small pan and pour hot water into the pan up to half the height of the moulds. Set in the oven, with the door open, for ten minutes, remove, let cool off, unmould, then cut the royale into small squares, lozenges or thin slices, and use as required.
This is a savoury baked custard made to be cut up as a garnish for clear soup, not eaten as a dish in itself. The whole point is a custard firm enough to hold a clean edge, which means gentle heat and no bubbles.
- The hinge: never let the water bath simmerIf the water around the moulds boils, the custard puffs, weeps and turns porous, and it will crumble when you try to cut it. Keep the bath at a bare quiver; adding a folded towel to the bottom of the pan helps.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 1/2 cup, so the custard is 1/2 cup broth plus 1/2 cup cream to one whole egg and one extra yolk. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, making three saltspoons roughly 3/4 teaspoon salt.
- Cut the cayenneA full 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne in one cup of custard is aggressive by current taste and will fight the soup it garnishes. A pinch is closer to what the dish wants, and the nutmeg should be barely detectable.
- Oven temperature and timeThe recipe names no temperature; a moderate oven, around 325F, suits a custard of this kind. Ten minutes is unlikely to set a custard of this depth in most modern moulds; expect longer, until the centre barely trembles and a knife tip comes out clean.
- The open doorPropping the door was most likely a way of moderating the heat of an unregulated range. With a thermostat, keep the door shut and simply use the lower temperature.
- Sieve before, not afterPress the mixture through a fine sieve into the moulds to catch strands of albumen. Straining is what gives the set custard the smooth face needed for clean lozenges.
- MouldsSmall ramekins, timbale moulds or a shallow buttered pan all work; a flat pan is easier if you only want squares and diamonds. Butter lightly and chill the baked custard before unmoulding, as cold custard cuts far more cleanly than warm.
- YieldFour small moulds give enough garnish for several bowls of clear soup; keep the custard refrigerated up to a day and cut just before serving.
Royale is French kitchen shorthand for a set savoury custard cut into shapes and dropped into clear soup; a consommé so garnished is consommé à la royale. It belongs to the nineteenth-century grande cuisine repertoire of garnishes for clear soups, alongside profiteroles, quenelles and vegetable brunoise, and by the time of Escoffier the flavoured variants — tomato, green pea, game, chicken — were codified as a family. A clear soup was judged partly on its garnish, and a royale was one way to put something delicate and geometric in the bowl.