Pot Au Feu
Take a good-sized beef-bone with plenty of meat on it, extract the marrow and place in a pot on the back of the range, covering the beef with three or more quarts of cold water; cover tightly, and allow to simmer slowly all day long. The next day, before heating, remove the cake of grease from the top, and add a large onion (previously stuck full of whole cloves, and then roasted in the oven till of a rich-brown color), adding tomatoes or any other vegetables which one may fancy. A leek or a section of garlic adds much to the flavor. Rice may be added, or vermicelli for a change. Just before serving, burn a little brown sugar and stir through it. This gives a peculiar flavor and rich color to the soup.- Mrs. Col. Clifford Thompson, New York City.
A two-day beef broth built on one bone, finished with a roasted clove-studded onion and burnt sugar. Nearly all of it translates directly; the overnight rest is the part to rethink.
- Cool it in the refrigerator, not on the rangeThe original assumes a pot sitting out overnight so the fat sets into a liftable cake. Strain the broth, cool it quickly in a shallow pan or an ice bath, then refrigerate; the fat still lifts off as a solid disc in the morning. Stock held for hours in the 40-140F range is where Clostridium perfringens gets its foothold, and reheating is not a reliable remedy once it has multiplied.
- The boneAsk for a marrow bone with meat still attached, or a beef shank cut crosswise, about 3-4 lb. The recipe gives no reason for extracting the marrow first, though it would reduce the fat that has to be skimmed; save the marrow to roast on toast.
- "Simmer slowly all day"On a wood range the back plate held a bare tremble. On a modern burner use the lowest setting, lid ajar, so the surface barely moves, or hold it in a 200-225F oven. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the stock.
- The roasted onionThe original studs a whole onion full of cloves; halving it and using 6-8 cloves is a modern adaptation. Roast at 400F until the cut faces are deep brown, 30-40 minutes. This is doing the work of both aromatic and colorant. A dry pan on the stovetop works as well.
- Burnt sugarMelt 1-2 teaspoons sugar in a small dry pan until it is genuinely dark, just short of acrid, then add a spoonful of hot broth to loosen it before stirring it in. Taken to a pale caramel it only sweetens; the "peculiar flavor" is the bitterness. Bottled burnt-sugar "browning" for soups and gravies appears in cookbooks of the period.
- Vegetables and starchAdd tomatoes and root vegetables with about 45 minutes left. Rice or vermicelli goes in for its own cooking time only, and is better cooked separately if you plan to keep the soup, since it will drink the broth and go slack.
- Water quantityThe recipe calls for three or more quarts; expect an all-day simmer to leave somewhere around two quarts of finished broth, depending on how tightly the pot is covered. Keep the bone covered as it goes; top up with boiling water rather than cold.
- YieldSix to eight servings as a first course, four as a supper with the meat pulled off the bone and returned to the pot.
Pot-au-feu — literally "pot on the fire" — is the standing French domestic dinner: beef and vegetables simmered together, the broth served first and the meat after. What Mrs. Thompson describes is closer to a clear beef bouillon than to the French dish, which is a plated boiled dinner as much as a soup, and the burnt-sugar finish and browned clove onion belong to the Anglo-American browning tradition rather than to any French version. The economics were the real argument. A single marrow bone and a range that was already lit all day for other work produced several quarts of soup at almost no cost, which is why household manuals of the period tend to give their first soup pages to stock from bones.