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Consomme Florentine

A consommé with chicken quenelles, half with tongue, half with spinach puree, served with peas and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and chervil share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme Florentine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quenelles

  1. Make 24 small quenelles using chicken forcemeat.

  2. To half of the quenelles, add finely chopped tongue.

  3. To the remaining half, add reduced spinach puree.

  4. Poach the quenelles until cooked.

Serve

  1. Place the quenelles in a soup tureen and add cooked peas.

  2. Pour boiling consommé over the quenelles and peas.

  3. Garnish with a pinch of chervil.

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. Spinach + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Peas + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + spinachtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Chicken + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,528 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken forcemeat
Forms the delicate quenelles, setting into a light, tender dumpling when poached.
Spinach puree
Gives the quenelles a green colour and a mild, earthy flavour.
Finely chopped tongue
Adds savoury, meaty flavour and texture to half of the quenelles.
Clear boiling consommé
Provides the clear, savoury broth that carries the dish.

The step that matters

Poach the quenelles until cooked. Quenelles are delicate forcemeat; they must be poached gently just until set. Boiling vigorously can break them apart and make them dense or rubbery.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, spinach, chervil):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, spinach, chervil. 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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