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Consomme Rachel
(France.) This soup was created for the great actress who, like most people of genius, was a bonne fourchette. Mix 1 cup of finely chopped and cooked chicken with sufficient white stock to make a paste. Season it and cook, like a custard, in a pan of water. Then cut in squares. Heat 1 quart of consomme with a thickening of flour and butter, 1 ounce of each, and the yolk of an egg and 1/2 cup of cream. Add salt, pepper, the chicken custard, and 2 tablespoonfuls of cooked green peas.
POTAGE REUNION. (invented for a banquet of a peace congress.). Boil 1 pound of cooked salmon in 2 quarts of white stock for 1/2 hour. Add salt and pepper and a blending of 1 cup of milk, some flour, butter, and yolk of an egg. Cook carefully ten minutes longer; add 1 tablespoonful chopped parsley, a little nutmeg and salt. Press through a sieve, add 2 dozen small cooked oysters, and serve at once.
Two French soups printed as one entry: a clear consommé finished with a chicken custard garnish, and a salmon purée. Both hinge on egg-yolk liaisons, which is where they most often go wrong.
- The liaison must not boilOnce the yolk and cream go in, hold the soup below a simmer — 170-180F. A boil curdles the yolk and leaves grainy threads through an otherwise smooth soup. Add the hot soup to the yolk and cream first, then return the mixture to the pan off the direct heat.
- The chicken custard is a royaleThis is the classic royale garnish: a savoury custard set in a water bath, cooled, and cut into small dice or shapes. The recipe says only to cook it 'in a pan of water,' which can be done on the stovetop over gentle heat or in a low oven; either way keep the water below a simmer and cook only until just set, then cool completely before cutting or it will crumble. It should be firm enough to hold a clean edge but not rubbery.
- "Sufficient white stock to make a paste"Unhelpfully vague. For 1 cup of finely chopped cooked chicken, work toward a thick purée — around 1/2 cup stock — then bind it with an egg or two, which the original omits but which most royale formulas require for a clean set.
- White stockAn unseasoned, unbrowned stock made from veal or chicken bones simmered without prior roasting. A good low-sodium chicken stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, as the point is a pale soup.
- The thickeningOne ounce each of flour and butter is a roux of about 2 tablespoons butter to 1/4 cup flour — enough to lightly bind a quart. Cook it a minute or two without colouring before adding the consommé, or the soup tastes of raw flour.
- Thickened consommé is a period habitModern practice would leave a consommé clear and add only the garnish. If you want the dish as written, expect a pale velouté rather than a clear broth; if you want it clear, skip the roux and keep the royale and peas.
- Potage Reunion: the salmon is overcookedThe salmon is already cooked, and half an hour in stock will strip it of flavour and texture. Since the soup is sieved to a purée, the loss is less visible than it would be otherwise, but ten minutes is ample to infuse the stock.
- Potage Reunion: the oysters"Two dozen small cooked oysters" means barely cooked — poached in their own liquor just until the edges ruffle, about a minute. Add them at the last moment off the heat. Held in hot soup they toughen quickly.
- YieldThe consommé serves four as a first course; the salmon soup, made with 2 quarts of stock, serves six to eight.
The Rachel of the title is Élisa Rachel Félix (1821-1858), the tragedienne who dominated the Comédie-Française in the 1840s and whose name attached itself to a whole family of dishes in the French repertoire — a garnish of artichoke bottoms and poached bone marrow is the version that later cooks, Escoffier among them, recorded under her name. Whether any of these were literally "created for" her is the sort of claim kitchens have always made and rarely documented; naming a dish after a celebrated diner was standard restaurant practice in nineteenth-century Paris, and the story travelled with the recipe. Bonne fourchette — literally "good fork" — is French for a hearty eater. The royale garnish itself long predates her: a savoury custard baked in a bain-marie and cut into shapes was a standard way of dressing a clear soup, and it survives in the diced egg garnishes of both French and Japanese clear soups. The companion recipe, Potage Réunion, is named for a peace congress rather than a place, which places it among the commemorative dishes late Victorian cookbooks liked to collect as souvenirs of public occasions.