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Consomme a LA Royale

A consommé with colored custard cubes made from egg yolks, water, salt, butter, cochineal, and spinach greening.

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 Royale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Mix the yolks of 6 eggs with ⅓ cup cold water and a pinch of salt.

  2. Strain the mixture and divide it into three equal parts.

  3. Color one part with cochineal, another with spinach greening, and leave the third plain.

Set the custard

  1. Grease three moulds with butter and fill them with the colored mixtures.

  2. Place the moulds in a pan of hot water and boil just long enough to set the mixture.

  3. Once set, cool the moulds, then turn out the custard onto a wet napkin.

Finish

  1. Cut the custard into small dice and keep covered until ready to serve in the soup.

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, sliceable custard when gently heated, giving the royale its structure.
Cold water
Thins the yolks so the custard sets more tender and smooth rather than dense.
Cochineal
Adds the red colour that makes the diced custard visible in the clear soup.
Spinach greening
Adds the green colour, giving the custard a contrasting shade alongside the red and plain portions.

The step that matters

Boil just long enough to set the mixture. Egg custard turns grainy, watery and porous if it is overheated, because the proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid. Heat the moulds gently and stop as soon as the custard firms.

Swap the spinach

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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