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Consomme a LA Madeleine

A clear consommé garnished with a pink custard shaped garnish, served with carrot, leek, truffle, and spaghetti.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,310 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Consomme a LA Madeleine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the garnish

  1. Prepare the custard as for the garnish à la Royale, coloring half of it pink.

  2. Cut the custard into fancy shapes.

  3. Cook the spaghetti, carrot, and leek in boiling salted water until tender.

Serve

  1. Bring the consommé to a boil in a saucepan; add the garnish and serve.

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 + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + truffletop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Carrot + truffletop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together436 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs (in the method)
Not stated in the record; custard garnish set is not described.
Spaghetti
Adds bulk and a soft, tender texture to the garnish.
Carrot
Adds color and a mild sweetness to the garnish.
Truffle
Adds a rich, earthy aroma to the clear stock.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (leek, truffle):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against leek, truffle. 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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