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Consomme Poulaillere

A clear chicken consommé made with goose or duck giblets, stock, marsala, herbs, and optional garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Consomme Poulaillere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 3½ pints of stock as per your recipe.

  2. Clean and chop the giblets of a goose or 2 ducks.

Make the consommé

  1. In a stewpan, melt 1 ounce of butter.

  2. Fry the giblets and onion until pale golden.

  3. Add 1 glass of marsala and ½ cup of beef broth.

  4. Reduce the mixture to a glaze.

  5. Pour in the remaining broth.

  6. Add the bouquet garni.

  7. Season with coarse sea salt if needed.

  8. Simmer for 2 hours.

  9. Strain the soup into a bowl.

  10. Let the soup cool.

  11. Skim off the fat.

  12. Clarify the soup as needed.

Serve

  1. Heat the soup before serving.

  2. Garnish with cooked vegetable strips.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets
Release savoury flavour into the stock as they fry and simmer.
Marsala
Adds aromatic, sweet-rich depth when reduced to a glaze.
Beef broth
Adds savoury body and depth to the consommé.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury aroma as it browns gently in butter.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture to a glaze. Reducing the marsala and broth concentrates their flavour and body. Cooking too hard or too long can over-darken or bitter the base, so watch it closely.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, flour, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, flour, bread. 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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