Le Cordon Bleu - Instruction #8; Practical #8

Instruction #8 – Soups – Part 2

• Clarification – Consommé with vegetable brunoise
• French onion soup
• Fish soup Marseillaise-style

Making consommé is really quite a miracle.

Consommé is clarified stock – and I mean clarified. If done correctly you should be able to see the bottom of the bowl.

Taking some prepared beef stock (as we’ve already seen) and adding some very particular ingredients will clarify into a consommé. Each ingredient, as explained by Chef Stril, has its own duty.

A clarifying mixture usually includes; lean ground beef, vegetables, tomatoes, and egg whites. Now you may ask, “How can this possibly clarify beef broth?”

The ground beef will coagulate in the boiling stock attaching itself to some of the impurities. The vegetables will add color and some more flavor. The juice which is extracted from the tomatoes in the hot stock also aids in the clarification. Finally, the egg whites, like the beef, will coagulate, attaching to the impurities. The main purpose of the egg whites however, is to bind all the solid ingredients together into a “cake scum” on the surface. Separating the solids (impurities - things that make the broth cloudy) with the crystal clear broth, or consommé.

One of the major tricks is to make sure the stock is salted enough – otherwise the clarification will not be successful.

Clarifying is not always a slam-dunk as demonstrated by Chef Stril. After straining his consommé he had to start the process all over again. For him, the second time was a charm.

Adding some brunoise, cooked vegetables into beef consommé makes for a great presentation.

Consommé is usually served with some sort of a puff pastry and cheese “snack.” We made puff pastry straws with gruyère cheese. A perfect combination.



In the midst of clarifying (and re-clarifying) his beef stock, Chef Stril also made fish stew – Marseille style and French onion soup.


A medley of red gurnard, Mediterranean scorpion fish, monkfish, whiting, sting fish, and conger eel was used for the fish stew. This, of course, can be any mix of fish.

My practical for this lesson is this afternoon. So, unless otherwise reported, you can assume that the clarification went crystal clear for me.