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An Economical Soup
Take a soup bone (any piece of beef not too fat will do), wash well, place in kettle with sufficient cold water for soup; let it boil, * Written especially for this book, by W. A. CROFFUT, editor of "American Queen," New York. skim thoroughly and continue to boil slowly from three to six hours, according to size and quality of meat; one hour before dinner, put in cabbage cut in quarters, sprinkling it with salt; quarter of an hour after add turnips halved or quartered according to size; quarter of an hour after turnips, add potatoes whole, or cut in two if large (turnips and potatoes should be pared and laid in cold water half an hour before using). When done take out vegetables and meat, place in heater, or if you have no heater, place plates over a pot or skillet of boiling water. If there is not enough soup, add boiling water, stir in a little thickening of flour and water, let it boil thoroughly; season to the taste with salt and pepper and serve at once. The soup will be excellent and the vegetables very fine.
A boiled dinner and its broth from one pot, with the vegetables staged so each finishes at the same moment. The timing of those additions is the whole technique.
- The stray line of typeThe phrase beginning "Written especially for this book, by W. A. CROFFUT" is a footnote marker that fell into the middle of the sentence during typesetting. Read straight through it: "let it boil, skim thoroughly and continue to boil slowly."
- "Boil slowly" means simmerA hard boil for three to six hours will emulsify the fat and cloud the broth, and will shred the meat into strings. Hold it at a bare tremble, with the surface barely moving.
- Cold water at the startStarting in cold water and bringing it up gradually is what draws the scum to the surface where it can be skimmed. This is the hinge of the whole recipe; a shortcut here gives you a grey, muddy soup.
- The soup boneAsk for shin, shank cross-cuts, or short rib — cuts with connective tissue and a marrow bone. Modern "soup bones" sold bare with no meat on them will give you stock but nothing to lift out and serve.
- Vegetable timingsAn hour for quartered cabbage is far longer than modern taste allows; 20 to 30 minutes is plenty, and it will still be soft. The 45 minutes for turnips and 30 for potatoes are about right for large pieces at a simmer.
- Soaking in cold waterThe half-hour soak for pared turnips and potatoes most likely served to keep them from discolouring before they went in. It does no harm, but it is unnecessary if you cut them shortly before use.
- The thickening"A little thickening of flour and water" is a whitewash — roughly a tablespoon of flour slaked in two tablespoons of cold water per quart of broth. Add it in a thin stream while stirring and boil a full two minutes, or the soup will taste of raw flour.
- Keeping things hotThe "heater" is a warming closet or plate-warmer, often built into or set beside a coal range. A 200F oven, or a covered dish set over the simmering pot, does the same job.
- Yield and serviceNo quantities are given. A bone-in shank of roughly 3 lb with a small cabbage and a few turnips and potatoes would serve four to six. The recipe itself implies two courses: the meat and vegetables are lifted out and kept hot while the broth is finished and served.
This is the standard nineteenth-century American boiled dinner, presented in Buckeye Cookery under the frankest possible name. The economy is structural rather than rhetorical: one fire, one kettle, and a cheap collagen-rich cut yields two courses, a clear broth and a platter of meat and roots, with nothing bought that a cellar would not already hold in winter. Cabbage, turnip and potato were all good winter keepers. The interrupted sentence preserves a footnote crediting W. A. Croffut, editor of the American Queen, for material written for the book; Buckeye Cookery, which first appeared in Ohio in the mid-1870s and was issued from Minneapolis from 1877 and reprinted repeatedly through the 1880s, was assembled from many hands, and the seams occasionally show in the printed page.