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Grand Consommé

A clear consommé made with veal, beef, fowl, rabbit, partridges, vegetables, and stock, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek 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 ↓

Grand Consommé

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine veal, beef, fowl, rabbit, or partridges in a pot.

  2. Add 1 cup of clear soup and stir well.

  3. Once it jellies, add 2 quarts of clear stock.

Make the consommé

  1. Boil and skim carefully.

  2. Season with turnips, carrots, onions, leeks, and celery.

  3. Let it simmer for 4 hours.

  4. Strain through a sieve into a clean earthen pan.

  5. Set aside in a cool place for use.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckles and beef
Release gelatin and meat flavour that give the stock body and a rich, jellied texture.
Fowl, rabbit and partridges
Add concentrated meat flavour to the stock during the long simmer.
Clear soup
Starts the clarification and helps the meats set into a jelly-like base.
Turnips, carrots, onions, leeks and celery
Add sweetness and aromatic vegetable flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil and skim carefully. Boiling vigorously breaks up proteins and fat into the liquid, making it cloudy and greasy. Gentle heat and careful skimming of the foam keep the consommé clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, rabbit, turnip, carrot, onion, leek. 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.

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