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Consomme Montmorency

A consommé with lettuce leaves rolled around veal, egg yolks, spices, cream, and butter, served over macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Consomme Montmorency

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Plunge lettuce leaves into boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.

  2. Mince veal and pound it into a pulp in a mortar.

  3. Add egg yolks, salt, cayenne, and mace; pound well and press through a sieve into a bowl.

  4. Mix in cream and spread evenly over the lettuce leaves.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll up the lettuce leaves and place in a small saucepan with butter and consommé.

  2. Cover with lightly buttered paper and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove and cut into half‑inch pieces.

  4. Place in a soup tureen with cooked macaroni and pour consommé over it 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce leaves
Wrap the veal filling and hold its shape during gentle baking.
Lean raw veal
Provides the main protein body that sets into a delicate, savoury filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the veal pulp and help it set smoothly when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the veal filling.
Cooked macaroni
Adds starchy body to the soup alongside the consommé.

The step that matters

Pound and sieve the veal filling. Pounding and pressing the veal through a sieve breaks down fibres so the filling becomes smooth and tender. Skipping this leaves lumps and a coarse texture when the egg sets during baking.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, pepper, mace, cream, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, pepper, mace, cream, 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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