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The Principal Kinds of Fonds De Cuisine

A guide to the main types of stock and foundation sauces in classical French cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

The Principal Kinds of Fonds De Cuisine

Ingredients

Directions

Start the stock

  1. Put the meat, poultry carcasses, five quarts of water, and one-half ounce of grey salt into a suitable stock pot.

  2. Place the pot on a moderate fire, stirring the meat from time to time.

  3. Remove the scum as it forms, adding a little cold water before the water reaches a boil to retard the boil and expel the scum.

Skim and simmer

  1. Remove the scum again, wiping the pot's edge to free it from deposits.

  2. Move the pot to a corner of the fire and continue cooking slowly for four or five hours.

Finish and strain

  1. Take the pot off the fire, add half a pint of cold water, let it rest a few minutes, and skim off the accumulated grease.

  2. Strain the consommé through a very fine strainer into a clean, wide white tureen, then place the tureen in a draught to hasten cooling.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

50Calories
2 gProtein
0 gFat
11 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Auguste Escoffier. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat (in the method)
Releases flavour and gelatin into the water, giving the stock its body and savoury depth.
Poultry carcasses (in the method)
Release flavour and gelatin into the water, adding body and savoury depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Keep the stock below a boil and skim the scum. A gentle simmer lets fat and impurities rise so they can be skimmed off. A rolling boil breaks them into the liquid, making the consommé cloudy and greasy.

“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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