Bouillon
Take two pounds of lean beef, two pounds of veal, and an old chicken. Cover it well with cold water. Place the soup kettle on the back of the stove where it will boil very slowly; as it does so, the fibers of the meat will enlarge. If cooked too rapidly, the meat hardens so that the water can not penetrate it. Boil three hours or until the meat is tender. Remove every particle of scum as it rises. When thoroughly tender, remove from the fire and let it stand in a cool place all night. Carefully remove every particle of fat from the stock; strain and return to the fire to boil, adding the following vegetables: One head of celery, a sprig of parsley, one turnip, three carrots, two onions, half teaspoonful of pepper corns, four whole cloves, a few tomatoes, and a bunch of sweet herbs. The vegetables must be sliced very thin before adding. Boil about one hour, and just before straining a second time, add salt. The yolks of four eggs well beaten is sufficient for three quarts of bouillon. A few drops of cold water should be added to the egg, pouring upon it the boiling bouillon. Serve in cups.
A three-meat stock finished with egg yolk, meant to be drunk from a cup rather than eaten with a spoon. The whole thing turns on temperature: nothing here should ever reach a rolling boil, least of all after the eggs go in.
- "Boil" means simmerDespite the wording, the instruction to keep the kettle at the back of the stove is the real direction — hold it at 180–190F, with the surface barely moving. A hard boil emulsifies fat and suspended protein into the liquid and you will never get a clear bouillon back.
- An old chickenA stewing hen or laying fowl, roughly 4–5 lb, tougher and far more gelatinous than a supermarket broiler. Substitute a whole chicken plus a pound of wings or feet to make up the collagen.
- SkimmingThe scum is coagulated protein. Most of it rises early, and the recipe's "as it rises" means keep at it rather than skim once; take it off before it breaks up and clouds the pot. Skim, do not stir.
- The overnight restWritten for a cold pantry. Chill the stock quickly — divide it into shallow containers and get it into the refrigerator rather than leaving three quarts of warm broth on a counter. The fat sets into a liftable cap once cold.
- The vegetablesOne hour of simmering is longer than needed; 30–40 minutes extracts the celery, carrot, turnip and onion without cooking them to mush and muddying the broth. Slicing thin, as directed, speeds this considerably.
- Salt lastCorrect, and worth keeping. The liquid concentrates over the long cooking, so anything salted early finishes harsh.
- The egg yolksThis is enrichment, not clarification — four yolks for three quarts. Beat them with the drop or two of cold water, then pour the near-boiling bouillon onto the yolks in a thin stream while whisking, and do not return the mixture to direct heat or it will scramble into threads.
- YieldAbout three quarts as written. Bouillon cups hold 6-8 oz, so roughly twelve to sixteen servings; serve it plain and hot, with no garnish beyond perhaps a little chopped parsley.
Bouillon in an American household book of this period is a drink, not a course — served in two-handled cups at receptions, card parties and afternoon calls, and prescribed constantly in the invalid-cookery chapters of the period alongside beef tea and mutton broth. The word is French for a boiled liquid, from bouillir, to boil, and its arrival in English-language household manuals tracks the nineteenth-century fashion for French kitchen vocabulary in genteel middle-class cooking. The three-meat foundation here (beef for depth, veal for body and gelatin, an old fowl for sweetness) echoes the beef-and-fowl combination of the professional petite marmite, scaled to a home range, and the two-stage method — meat first, vegetables only after the fat has been lifted off a cold pot — reflects an era when clear soup was judged largely by whether you could see the bottom of the cup through it.