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Consomme a LA Royalc

A consommé with egg yolk custard cubes added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Consomme a LA Royalc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Mix the yolks of 4 eggs with ½ cup of broth and a pinch of salt.

  2. Strain the mixture and divide it into 3 equal portions.

  3. Color one portion with cochineal, one with spinach‑greening, and leave the third plain.

Poach and set

  1. Pour each mixture into buttered moulds and dip them one-third deep into hot water.

  2. Cover and poach until the custards are set.

  3. Remove from heat, let cool, and turn out onto a napkin.

Serve

  1. Cut into dice or shapes with a vegetable cutter and add to the soup just 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

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

  3. Butter + spinachtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set into a firm, tender custard when gently heated, giving the garnish its structure.
Broth
Thins the yolks so the custard sets smooth and moist rather than dense.

The step that matters

Poach and set. Heat must stay gentle, with the moulds dipped only partway in hot water. Egg proteins set firmly at moderate temperatures, and boiling or too-high heat makes the custard curdle, pockmarked, or rubbery.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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