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Consomme De Menages

A clear beef and fowl consommé made with vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme De Menages

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef, fowl, and bones in a large pot with cold water and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Do not let it boil hard.

  3. Skim the surface 2-3 times until clean.

  4. Cover and simmer slowly for 6-8 hours, adding water as needed to maintain the level.

  5. Add the vegetables whole or nearly whole after skimming.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup.

  2. Remove any grease before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Gives the broth its meaty flavor and body as it simmers slowly.
Old fowl
Adds rich savory flavor and gelatin-forming body to the clear broth.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavor to the simmering broth.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they cook into the broth.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Keeping the broth from boiling hard. A hard boil churns fat and proteins into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. A gentle simmer lets impurities rise to the surface so they can be skimmed off, keeping the consommé clear.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, onion, leek, turnip, parsley, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, leek, turnip, parsley, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More consommé recipes

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