Skip to main content
Main

Consomme a LA Royale

A clear consommé with carrot and turnip, finished with egg whites, vinegar, sherry, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme a LA Royale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Prepare the stock with a little carrot and turnip.

  2. Remove all fat from the stock.

  3. Combine the fat with tarragon vinegar and seasoning in a saucepan.

  4. Warm the mixture gently without boiling.

Clear the stock

  1. Slightly beat the egg whites and shells with a little cold water.

  2. Add the beaten mixture to the soup.

  3. Whisk until boiling.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup.

Prepare the garnish and serve

  1. Cook the turnip and carrot.

  2. Cut the cooked turnip and carrot into pretty shapes.

  3. Place the shaped vegetables in a tureen.

  4. Pour the clear soup over the vegetables.

  5. Add the sherry before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + tarragontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Good stock
Forms the clear savoury base of the consommé.
Egg whites and shells
Coagulate as they heat, trapping particles so the soup clears.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a touch of sweetness at the end.

The step that matters

Whisk until boiling. Egg whites must be whisked into the cold stock and heated slowly so they form a raft that traps impurities. Stirring too vigorously once it is near a simmer can break the raft and leave the consommé cloudy.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, egg, tarragon, vinegar, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, egg, tarragon, vinegar, sherry. 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 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes