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Soup from Stock
To make soup from any stock, put on as much stock as needed (if in jelly, scrape the sediment from off the bottom), add seasoning, water and vegetables. The potatoes should be peeled, sliced, and laid in salt and water for half an hour, the cabbage parboiled and drained, and all others either sliced or cut fine, before adding them to the soup; boil until thoroughly dissolved, strain through a colander and serve at once.
A method rather than a formula: this is what the 1877 kitchen did with the jellied stockpot the morning after a boiled dinner. The instructions assume you already have stock and know roughly how much soup you want.
- "If in jelly, scrape the sediment"Chilled stock sets to a jelly with a layer of fat on top and a dark, gritty deposit of coagulated protein at the bottom. Lift the fat off, then scrape the sediment away — it clouds the finished soup and carries off flavours. A modern equivalent is straining warm stock through a damp cloth.
- Potatoes in salt and waterThe half-hour soak in salted water was a standard preparation of the period; it draws off some surface starch, which may help keep the broth from clouding. Skip it if you want a thicker, more rustic soup.
- Parboiling the cabbageCabbage boiled directly in stock gives off sulphurous compounds that dominate everything else. Two or three minutes in plain boiling water, then drained, removes most of it. The same applies to turnip and swede.
- "Boil until thoroughly dissolved"The vegetables here are flavouring and are meant to fall apart; the soup is then strained. Keep it at a gentle simmer — a hard boil will emulsify the remaining fat and turn the broth murky.
- StrainingThe book calls only for a colander, which catches the coarse debris. For a clearer result, follow it with a fine sieve; press the softened vegetables against the mesh if you want body instead.
- Seasoning orderThe recipe adds seasoning at the start. If your stock is already salted, it is safer to hold the salt back until the end, since simmering concentrates whatever is already in it.
- Proportions and yieldNone are given. A workable ratio is 2 quarts of stock to about 1 lb of mixed vegetables, which strains down to roughly six servings of clear soup.
- Stock keepingA nineteenth-century cellar kept stock for days at cool temperatures; a refrigerator gives you three to four days, or freeze it. Bring any stock that has been standing to a full boil before building soup on it.
The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book was published in Marysville, Ohio, in 1876 by the women of a Methodist congregation, and Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox, was the enlarged edition, issued from Minneapolis. Much of its soup chapter turns on the stockpot: boiling beef, mutton or a fowl every few days accumulated liquid that must not be wasted. "Soup from stock" is therefore a second-day recipe, sitting in the book alongside the instructions for making the stock itself, with its insistence on slicing everything fine, parboiling, and straining through a colander. The detail about jelly is a reminder of how stock behaved before refrigeration: a well-made beef stock set firm from its gelatine, and the solid fat cap on top was skimmed off and saved for frying or for soap.