Vegetable Soup
Early in the morning wash a beef shank in several waters. Break the bone and put it in a large kettle of cold water. Let it boil steadily until an hour before dinner. Skim off the impurities of the meat as soon as they begin to rise. Before adding vegetables strain the stock; then put in equal quantities of the following: Potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, grated corn; also one onion, three carrots, one large turnip, a little parsley, thyme and small piece of garlic if liked, one very small pepper pod, three tablespoonfuls of brown sugar, one teaspoonful of black pepper. Boil an hour and pour in thickening of milk and flour and serve.
A long-boiled shank stock finished with a milk-and-flour liaison. The proportions are given loosely, in the manner of a cook who expected you to taste as you went.
- Timing, translated"early in the morning" until "an hour before dinner" could mean anywhere from about four to eight hours, depending on when the household dined; dinner was often at midday. A steady 3-4 hours at 190-200F will extract the gelatine without clouding the stock.
- Boil steadily, but do notA rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and turns it opaque. Keep it at a lazy shiver with the surface barely moving, and skim the scum in the first thirty minutes when it rises hardest.
- Break the boneAsk the butcher to saw the shank crosswise into rounds rather than doing it yourself. The exposed marrow and cut cancellous bone are what give this stock body.
- Grated cornFresh ears scored down the middle of each row and scraped with the back of a knife, so you get the pulp and milk and leave the hulls behind. Two ears is about a cup. Frozen kernels will work but give a different, chewier result.
- Equal quantitiesRead this as about a cup each of diced potato, shredded cabbage, chopped tomato and grated corn, which suits a stockpot holding 4-5 quarts. Add the potato and carrot first, the cabbage and corn in the last 20 minutes, or the cabbage will go sulphurous.
- Pepper podOne small dried hot pepper, whole, not a bell pepper. Fish it out before serving. Combined with three tablespoons of brown sugar this is a distinctly sweet-hot soup; start with one tablespoon of sugar and add more if you want the period flavour.
- Thickening of milk and flourWhisk about 2 tablespoons flour into a cup of cold milk until smooth, then temper it with hot broth before it goes into the pot. Added straight to boiling liquid it will lump and can curdle against the tomatoes. Simmer three or four minutes afterwards to cook out the raw flour.
- SaltNone is listed; the cook was evidently expected to season to taste. Season after the stock is strained rather than at the start.
- YieldAbout 3 quarts, serving 8 as a first course or 5-6 as a meal.
Vegetable soup built on a beef shank was the standard economy of a household with a coal or wood range that stayed hot all day anyway: the pot went on at breakfast and cost nothing extra to keep going until dinner. Shank is among the cheaper cuts on the animal and the richest in connective tissue, which is exactly what a long, slow extraction wants. What marks this particular version is the finish - three tablespoons of brown sugar and a milk-and-flour thickening, a sweetened and bound treatment that later cooks abandoned. The line "a small piece of garlic if liked" is telling too: garlic here is an optional foreign note rather than a given.