Skip to main content
Main

Consomme Alexandra

A consommé garnished with poached tapioca, chicken meat, chicken quenelles, and blanched lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,449 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Consomme Alexandra

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 quart of excellent consommé.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of poached tapioca to thicken slightly.

Garnish and serve

  1. In a soup tureen, place 1 tablespoon of white chicken meat, 1 tablespoon of small chicken quenelles, and 1 tablespoon of blanched lettuce.

  2. Pour the boiling consommé over the garnish and serve immediately.

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. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Consommé
Clear, flavourful broth that forms the body of the soup.
Poached tapioca
Thickens the broth slightly, giving it a light body without clouding it.
Chicken quenelles
Soft, delicate dumplings that add texture and mild chicken flavour.
White chicken meat
Adds finely cut protein texture and chicken flavour to the soup.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat. 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

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes