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Consomme De Volaille

A clear chicken consommé made from roasted fowl, veal, ham, and vegetables, simmered and clarified.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Consomme De Volaille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the remains of the roast fowls into small pieces, removing skin and browned parts.

  2. Place the fowl pieces, veal, and ham in a saucepan and cover with plain white stock.

Simmer

  1. Add salt to taste and heat the saucepan, skimming any scum that rises.

  2. Before it boils, add carrots, onions, celery, thyme, parsley, marjoram, bay leaf, cloves, mace, and whole pepper.

  3. Simmer the mixture for about four hours without boiling.

Clarify and strain

  1. Strain the liquid through a napkin, remove all fat, and clarify with raw meat and egg white.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast fowl remains
Provide the main poultry flavour and body for the broth.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin from bones and collagen, giving the consommé body and mouthfeel.
Lean ham
Contributes savory, salty depth to the broth.
Egg white
Traps fine particles during clarifying so the finished liquid turns clear.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. A rolling boil breaks the broth into a cloudy liquid by emulsifying fat and dispersing particles. A gentle simmer keeps it clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

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