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Fowl Soup
Skin and cut in pieces an old fowl: break the bones: put all together into a covered earthen pan with half a pint of water. Simmer for seven hours in a slow oven, adding more water when required. Season to taste, and strain it. This may be eaten hot as a soup or cold as a jelly. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
This is an invalid's broth rather than a soup course: very little water, very long heat, and a finished liquid concentrated enough to set as jelly when cold. The technique survives intact in a modern oven.
- "An old fowl"A laying hen past her prime, tough but rich in collagen and flavour. Ask for a stewing hen or boiling fowl; a supermarket roasting chicken has neither the connective tissue nor the depth of taste and will give a thin result.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300F (150C), or 275F if your oven runs hot. The liquid should barely tremble. A rolling simmer over seven hours will cloud the broth and drive off the water faster than you can replace it.
- Half a pint of waterTen imperial fluid ounces, a little over a US cup -- deliberately mean. The point is extraction, not dilution: much of the liquid comes from the meat itself. Top up sparingly, an ounce or two at a time, only when the pan looks like drying out.
- The covered earthen panAny lidded, oven-safe pot: an enamelled cast-iron casserole, a stoneware bean pot, a Pyrex dish with a tight foil seal. A snug lid is the whole apparatus here, since almost nothing may evaporate.
- Break the bonesNot decorative. Cracked bones and split joints release marrow and gelatin, which is what makes the cold version set. A heavy knife or cleaver against the joints does it most easily; the bones of an old bird are hard going for lighter tools.
- Season to taste, and strainSalt at the end, once the liquid has reduced to its final volume, or a modest seasoning at the start will finish up harsh. Strain through a fine sieve or muslin, then chill and lift the fat cap before serving cold.
- Cold as a jellyIf it does not set firm in the refrigerator overnight, the bird was too young or the water too generous. Reducing the strained broth by a third on the stovetop before chilling will usually fix it.
- YieldNot stated. Starting from half a pint of water plus modest topping up, a bird of ordinary size should give roughly a pint to a pint and a half of finished broth: a few small servings rather than a soup course for a table.
The shape of the recipe is telling: a small quantity of very strong broth, unthickened, unflavoured with vegetables, served hot to an invalid or cold as a savoury jelly. Nineteenth-century household medicine treated concentrated meat essences as nourishment in near-medicinal doses, and the same logic produced beef tea, veal jelly and the commercial meat extracts that came into British kitchens in the second half of the century. The recipe also reflects an economy that has largely disappeared from British and American cooking: a hen that had stopped laying was too tough to roast but too valuable to waste, and seven hours in a slow oven turned her into something worth more than her meat. The cost note, 2s. 6d., is the mark of Cassell's throughout, a book written for households that budgeted a dish before making it.