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RAGOUTS, GRAVY FOR ALL KINDS OF (another way)
The bones and trimmings of meat and poultry ought to furnish stock for making the sauces required for everyday use in an ordinary household. In a properly managed kitchen no bone ought to be thrown away until it has been stewed so that it is as clean as a piece of ivory. If cooks would only stew the bones thoroughly, they might save their masters many pounds in a year, which are otherwise spent in buying beef and veal for stock; and if the cook were clever in flavouring her sauces, six persons out of ten would not discover that the sauce was not made from fresh meat. To make stock from bones, break up the bones of a leg of mutton or of a piece of beef into small pieces. If these bones are not at hand, purchase from the butcher two pennyworth of fresh. Wash these with scrupulous care, and cut away any portions that are not agreeable. Put the bones into a large saucepan, and pour over them five pints of cold water. If a very strong gravy is wanted, less water may be used. Bring the liquor slowly to the boil, remove every particle of scum, and let it simmer very gently indeed for five hours. Strain it into a bowl, and if convenient put it aside until the next day. Take away the cake of fat from the top (it may be used for frying fish, etc.), pour off the liquor gently, to leave undisturbed any sediment which may have settled at the bottom. Put the stock into a saucepan, and with it vegetables and herbs for flavouring suited to the meat with which it is to be served. For ordinary brown gravy the following will be sufficient:--A large carrot cut into three or four pieces, three or four outer sticks of celery, or half a tea-spoonful of bruised celery-seed tied in muslin, an onion stuck with three cloves, a small blade of mace, a bunch of sweet herbs, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, and a tea-spoonful of pepper. Simmer all gently for two hours, strain the stock, and put it aside in a cool place. It will keep for a week in cold weather, in hot weather it should be boiled every other day. When it is wanted, take as much of it as is required, mix with it a small portion of Bovril, thicken it if necessary with a little brown thickening, and it will be ready for use. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the bones. Sufficient for a quart of gravy. Time, two days.
This is a bone stock finished as a brown gravy, written for a kitchen where the stockpot ran continuously. The instructions are sound; only the units, a couple of vanished products, and the keeping advice need translating.
- The hinge: gentle simmer, no boil"Simmer very gently indeed" is the whole method. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and pulverises the bone marrow, giving cloudy, greasy stock that no amount of straining will clear. Aim for bare movement at the surface for the full five hours.
- Quantities and unitsFive imperial pints is about 100 fl oz, roughly 12 cups. "Two pennyworth" of fresh bones is not a measurement you can act on; reckon 2-3 lb of beef, veal or mutton bones for this volume of water.
- Brown thickeningCassell's means a roux of flour cooked in fat until nut-brown, kept on hand as a paste and whisked in as needed. About 1 tablespoon each butter and flour, browned slowly, will thicken a quart of gravy to a light coating consistency.
- BovrilA concentrated beef extract, still sold, though the modern formulation is not the Victorian one, and in some markets a yeast-based version is sold under the name. Use half a teaspoon at most in a quart, taste, and hold back on the two teaspoons of salt until after it goes in.
- Blade of mace and celery seedA blade of mace is a whole piece of the dried aril around a nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes. Half a teaspoon of celery seed genuinely does stand in for the celery sticks, and is worth knowing when celery is not in the house.
- Not actually brown yetNothing here is browned before it goes in the pot, so the stock comes out pale. If you want real brown-gravy colour and depth, roast the bones and the carrot and onion at 425F until well coloured before the water goes on.
- Keeping itIgnore "it will keep for a week in cold weather" and "boiled every other day" -- that was larder management before refrigeration, and repeatedly reboiling stock left at room temperature is a bad bet. Chill it quickly, refrigerate no more than 3-4 days, or freeze.
- YieldA quart of finished gravy, enough for eight to ten servings alongside a roast or in a ragout. The two days in the timing are mostly the overnight rest that lets the fat set into a liftable cake.
This is household economy stated as moral instruction, which is very much the register of Cassell's: the cook who fails to stew her bones white is costing "her masters many pounds in a year." Late Victorian middle-class kitchens ran on the perpetual stockpot, and the appeal to thrift assumed a servant reading the book and an employer paying the butcher's bill. The one strikingly modern touch is the Bovril. Beef extract had only recently become a pantry staple -- the product is generally credited to the Scottish butcher John Lawson Johnston, who developed a concentrated "fluid beef" in the 1870s that was marketed under the Bovril name in the following decade -- and its arrival in a recipe like this marks the moment when commercial concentrates began quietly propping up the homemade stock they were later to replace. The frank admission that "six persons out of ten would not discover that the sauce was not made from fresh meat" tells you the substitution was already understood to be a substitution.