Skip to main content
Main

Consomme Montmorency

A clear consommé made with veal knuckle, fowl, vegetables, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Consomme Montmorency

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Wipe the veal knuckle and remove the meat from the bone, cutting it into small pieces.

  2. In a pot, cook the celery, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf in butter for 6 minutes.

  3. Add the meat, bone, and vegetables to a soup kettle with 3 quarts of cold water.

  4. Clean and truss the fowl, then add it to the kettle.

  5. Cover and cook until the fowl is tender.

  6. Remove the fowl and let the stock cook for 2 more hours.

  7. Strain and cool the stock.

  8. Remove the fat and clarify the stock using the white and shell of 1 egg for each quart.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Soak the tapioca overnight in cold water, then drain and cook in boiling water until transparent.

  2. Drain the tapioca again and rinse with cold water to separate the globules.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the tapioca and cut pieces of fowl breast to the cleared soup.

  2. Add salt to taste, reheat, and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 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 knuckle
Releases gelatin and flavor into the stock, giving the consommé body and savoury depth.
Fowl
Contributes rich poultry flavor to the stock and provides tender meat for the finished soup.
Egg whites (in the method)
Bind to impurities as they heat, so the clarified stock becomes clear.
Pearl tapioca
Adds a soft, translucent texture to the finished soup as a garnish.
Butter
Carries the aromatic vegetables' flavors and softens them before the stock is made.

The step that matters

Clarifying the stock. Egg whites must be whisked into cool, fat-free stock and heated gently so they form a raft that traps cloudy particles. Boiling too early breaks the raft and leaves the consommé murky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, carrot, parsley, thyme, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, carrot, parsley, thyme, butter. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes