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Consommé Doré

A clear chicken consommé made with bone, ham, vegetables, eggs, and clarified to a golden color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Consommé Doré

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Place the chicken, soup bone, and ham in a pot with cold water and boil slowly for 5 hours, covered.

  2. Fry the onion in a little butter or drippings, then add it along with all the vegetables and seasonings to the pot.

  3. Boil for an additional 2 hours.

  4. Strain the mixture into an earthen bowl and let it sit overnight.

Clarify and serve

  1. The next day, remove the fat from the top and take out the jelly, leaving the thickest part of the sediment.

  2. Mix in the shells and whites of the eggs and boil quickly for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the kettle sit for 10 minutes to settle.

  4. Pour the soup through a jelly bag without squeezing it until it is perfectly clear and a golden brown color.

  5. If the soup is not clear, pass it through again.

  6. Use the cleanest kettle and scald your sieve each time to prevent particles from washing back into the soup.

  7. Serve for dinner parties or luncheons, garnishing to taste.

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 + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites and shells bind to cloudy particles, which settle out so the broth becomes clear.
Soup bone
Long simmering draws gelatin and flavor from the bone into the broth.
Chicken
Slow simmering releases flavor and body into the broth.
Onion
Frying first deepens the color and adds sweet, savory aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg whites and shells. Boiling too hard or stirring after adding the eggs can break up the clarifying raft, leaving the consommé cloudy. Simmering gently lets the proteins trap particles so they rise and settle.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, onion, parsley, carrot, parsnip, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, onion, parsley, carrot, parsnip, celery. 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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