Skip to main content
Main

Consomme a Rficossaise

A clear beetroot consommé flavored with marjoram, beef, duck, fennel, parsley, and chipolatas, served with sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Consomme a Rficossaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the consommé

  1. Combine the beetroot juice and marjoram in a pot.

  2. Add the beef and duck, then cook gently for 4 hours.

Prepare and serve

  1. Cut the beef into large dice and the duck into small slices.

  2. Add the additional beetroot juice, fennel, and parsley to the soup.

  3. Stir in the beef, duck, and grilled chipolatas just before serving.

  4. Serve with a sauceboat of sour cream on the side.

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. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Fennel + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beetroot + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Marjoram + fenneltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Beetroot juice
Gives the consommé its colour, earthy flavour and sweetness.
Breast of beef
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the broth as it cooks slowly.
Duck
Contributes rich, savoury flavour and fat to the broth and the final dish.
Grilled chipolatas
Add browning, smoky flavour and a meaty bite to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook gently for 4 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the beef release flavour slowly. A rolling boil would make the liquid cloudy and toughen the meat.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (marjoram, beef, fennel, parsley, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against marjoram, beef, fennel, parsley, cream. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes