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GRAVY, BROWN, SOUP (made from fresh meat)
Take half a pound of lean ham, two pounds of the shin of beef, and two pounds of veal. Cut the meat from the bones, break the latter into small pieces, and, if there be any marrow, lay it at the bottom of a deep saucepan. If there be no marrow, use a quarter of a pound of butter. Put in the meat (which should be cut up) and bones, cover closely, and place the saucepan on the fire. When well browned on one side, turn the meat over on the other, and take care it does not burn. When the meat is thoroughly browned, add a pint of cold water to draw out the juice. In a quarter of an hour add three quarts of boiling water, with two carrots, one turnip, three or four onions, all sliced, a head of celery, or a salt-spoonful of pounded celeryseed, tied in muslin, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a dozen peppercorns. Bring the soup to a boil, remove the scum carefully as it rises, and add two tea-spoonfuls of salt, which will assist it in rising. When well skimmed, draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, and let its contents simmer gently, but continuously, for four hours. Take it off, and strain the soup through a jelly-bag. Let it stand until the next day. Lift the fat off the top in a cake, and, when pouring the soup off to warm, be careful not to disturb the sediment. Strain it again, if necessary; but if the directions have been followed, the soup will be clear and bright, with a brown tinge. It will keep better if vegetables are not boiled with it until it is about to be used. This soup forms the basis of all other kinds. If through any mischance it should not be clear, see directions for CLARIFYING GRAVY. It is better made the day before it is wanted, so that the fat can be entirely removed. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per quart. Sufficient for three quarts of soup.
This is a classic brown stock rather than a soup to serve as it stands: the book says so plainly at the end, and everything about the method is aimed at clarity and keeping quality. Two things decide whether it works — how far you take the browning, and how gently it simmers afterwards.
- The hinge: brown dry, then deglazeThe meat and bones brown in marrow or butter under a lid with no liquid, and only when they are properly coloured does a pint of cold water go in to draw the juices. Rushing to the water gives a pale, thin stock; letting the pan catch and blacken gives a bitter one that no clarifying will fix.
- "Draw to the side of the fire"On a range this means the barest simmer, a bubble breaking every second or two; in modern terms roughly 180-190F, though the book itself gives no temperature. A hard boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and makes the stock very hard to clear, however carefully you strain it.
- Quantities and yieldFour and a half pounds of meat and bone to three quarts of boiling water, plus the pint of cold water used first; the book reckons it sufficient for three quarts of soup after four hours. That is a rich, gelatinous stock by modern standards; shin and veal together supply most of the body.
- Old measuresA salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon. A pint here is the imperial 20 oz pint, so the deglazing liquid is nearer two and a half US cups, and three quarts is about 3.6 US quarts.
- A jelly-bagA conical flannel or close-woven cotton bag hung from a stand. A colander lined with several layers of damp muslin does the same work; let it drip rather than pressing, since squeezing pushes fine solids through and clouds the result.
- Standing overnightWritten for a cold larder. Cool the strained stock fast — an ice bath, or decanted into shallow containers — and refrigerate. The fat still lifts off as a cake in the morning, and the sediment still stays behind when you pour.
- VegetablesThe note that it keeps better without them is sound: carrot and turnip sugars and celery both shorten a stock's life and blur its flavour. If you plan to freeze it, leave the vegetables for the finished soup.
- The costing1s. 4d. per quart is Victorian retail pricing, useful only as a signal that this was a substantial household expense rather than a scrap-bag stock.
This is the foundation stone of the classical repertoire as English cookery books inherited it from France — what an escoffier-trained kitchen would call estouffade or brown stock, made from a mixture of beef, veal and a little cured pork for depth. The insistence that it "forms the basis of all other kinds" reflects a nineteenth-century household economy in which the same large stockpot was often said to serve for gravies, sauces, and clear soups alike. The half pound of lean ham is doing what a piece of bacon rind or a ham hock does in a modern stock, adding cured savour and a little salt; the veal, generally credited with supplying the gelatine that makes a stock set to a jelly when cold, was the standard partner to beef shin for exactly that reason. The cross-reference to "clarifying gravy" is a reminder that a bright, brown, faintly amber consomm est cook, and cloudiness a small domestic disgrace.