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CLEAR SOUP (made from bones)
Take the bones of a piece of roast beef, which should weigh, before cooking, seven or eight pounds, or, if these are not at hand, one pound of fresh bones; break them into small pieces, and put them into a stewpan, with three quarts of cold water. Let the liquid boil, then draw the stewpan to the side of the fire, and let it simmer gently for six hours. Very carefully remove the scum as it rises. Strain it, and leave it until the next day. Remove every particle of fat, and pour the liquid into the stewpan (being careful to leave any sediment behind), with a large carrot cut in slices, a turnip, an onion, and a small tea-spoonful of bruised celery-seed tied in muslin. Let these simmer for another hour and a half; if the liquid is very much reduced, add a little cold water, so as to keep up the quantity to three pints. Season it while boiling with pepper, salt, and a small lump of sugar. Strain it again, and skim it carefully from time to time. In order to make it quite clear and bright, whisk the whites of two eggs with half a pint of cold water. Stir this briskly into the soup when it is just warm. Let it boil, and gently lift off the scum as it rises. Draw the stewpan back a little, and keep it boiling gently for half an hour. Let it stand to settle, and strain it through a jelly-bag two or three times if necessary. It ought to look like sherry. The white of one egg is required for a pint of soup. Add a tea-spoonful of Bovril, and a little browning, if the colour is too light, but care must be taken in browning it. This soup may be varied to any extent. Carrots, turnips, onions, celery, green peas, asparagus, vermicelli, or macaroni may be added, and the soup will then take the name of the vegetable which is put into it. Macaroni and vermicelli should be boiled separately, or they will spoil the clearness. Sufficient for three pints. Probable cost of clear soup, exclusive of the bones, 2d. per pint.
A Victorian consommé built on the carcass of Sunday's roast. The method is sound and still the way clear soup is made; only the vessels, the fire management and a couple of the ingredients need translation.
- The hinge: never let the clarification boil hardThe hinge: keep the clarification below a hard boil -- The egg white goes in when the liquid is barely warm (the recipe says "just warm"), and the pot should then come up only to a lazy shiver. A rolling boil shreds the coagulated raft and drives the cloudy particles back into the soup, and no amount of straining afterwards will retrieve it. The recipe's "boiling gently" means the surface trembling, just short of a true boil, with the raft floating undisturbed.
- "Draw the stewpan to the side of the fire"On a range this meant moving the pan off the hot centre to a cooler edge. On a gas or induction hob, use the lowest setting, or set the pan half off the burner. A very low oven with the lid ajar is another way to hold a six-hour stock at a steady bare simmer.
- QuantitiesThese are imperial measures, so three quarts is roughly 14 US cups and the three pints of finished soup roughly 7 US cups. The instruction that the white of one egg is required for a pint of soup is the useful ratio to remember.
- Bones alone give thin soupBones from a roast have already given up some of their flavour. A pound of raw shin, gelatinous and cheap, simmered alongside them will do more for the finished cup than extra time will. Roasted bones also contribute colour, which the recipe later tries to supply with browning.
- Bovril and browningBovril is a salty beef extract still sold; a teaspoon is a seasoning, not a base, and it will push the salt up noticeably. "Browning" was burnt-sugar caramel colouring, sold by the bottle. Neither is necessary if the bones were well browned first.
- Celery seed and the jelly-bagA teaspoon of bruised celery seed is assertive; half that is plenty for modern palates, and a stick of celery serves as well. A jelly-bag is a fine cloth strainer; a sieve lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter, undisturbed and allowed to drip rather than squeezed, does the same job.
- The overnight rest is doing real workChilling sets the fat into a lid you can lift off whole, and lets the fine sediment fall. Skip it and the clarification has far more to remove. Cool the stock quickly and refrigerate it rather than leaving it out overnight as the original assumed.
- GarnishesThe advice to cook macaroni or vermicelli separately holds absolutely, as their starch clouds the broth. Vegetable garnishes should be cut small, cooked apart in salted water, and dropped into the hot clear soup at the moment of serving.
Clear soup was the Victorian dinner's opening statement: a cook who could send up a bowl the colour of sherry, with no fleck of fat and no haze, had demonstrated patience, a steady fire and command of the egg-white raft. The technique underpins every consommé that follows, and the economy of the thing was part of the lesson. The bones of a joint that had already fed the household on Sunday were expected to yield three pints of soup for about twopence a pint, exclusive of the bones themselves, which cost nothing. The mention of Bovril arguably helps date the entry: the beef extract was a comparatively recent commercial product when this dictionary was compiled, and its appearance in a classical clarification suggests how quickly bottled shortcuts found their way into even the most technically conservative recipes.