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Consomme De Vollaile

A clear chicken consommé served with small quenelles made from chicken meat, liver, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Consomme De Vollaile

8 servings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Remove the breast meat from the fowl and save the legs and thighs.

  2. Chop the remaining bird and giblets, then mash them roughly in a mortar.

Make the consommé

  1. Add the mixture to cold beef broth and heat over low fire until it simmers, skimming carefully.

  2. Strain the liquid from the bones and let it cool.

Make the quenelles

  1. Pound the saved meat with the liver, salt, butter, and spiced pepper in a mortar.

  2. Add soaked bread crumbs and pound again, then mix in the beaten egg.

  3. Keep the mixture cold, form into small quenelles, and poach until done.

Serve

  1. Add the quenelles to the clarified and heated consommé 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the meat and bones that flavour the broth and form the body of the quenelles.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the quenelle mixture tender and moist.
Egg
Binds the quenelle mixture so it holds its shape when poached.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in stock, they add moisture and lightness to the quenelle mixture.
Beef broth
Forms the base liquid that becomes the clear consommé.

The step that matters

Heating the consommé slowly while skimming. Heating over low fire until it only simmers lets the particles coagulate and rise, so skimming can clarify the broth. Boiling vigorously would break up the clumps and leave it cloudy.

“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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