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ROOTS, ESSENCE OF (maigre)
Clean three bunches of carrots, two of turnips, six heads of celery, two bunches of white onions, and one of leeks, the whole sliced, and put them for two minutes in boiling water; cool them afterwards in cold water, then drain, and put them in a stock-pot with ten quarts of boiling water, add an onion with two cloves, a little salt, pepper, nutmeg, grated, and butter; simmer them for three hours over a slow fire, skim off all the butter, and strain the essence through a silk sieve. This stock, not being coloured, is adapted for sauces and soups that are to be white.
This is a white vegetable stock built on a very large scale — ten quarts of water and something like fifteen pounds of root vegetables. Everything about the method is aimed at keeping it pale, so nothing is browned and nothing is allowed to boil hard.
- Scale it downAs written this is a very large batch, more than most domestic stockpots will hold, and the yield will be somewhat less than the ten quarts of water put in, after simmering and skimming. A quarter batch — roughly 1 lb carrots, 8 oz turnips, 2 celery hearts, 8 oz onions, 1 leek to 2.5 quarts water — fits a domestic pot.
- "Bunches" and "heads"Victorian greengrocers' bunches are not a fixed measure. Read three bunches of carrots as about 3 lb, two of turnips as 1.5-2 lb, and six heads of celery as six whole heads, not six ribs — a genuinely large amount of celery, which is where much of the flavour comes from.
- MaigreThe word means the stock contains no meat, for fast days or Lent. Butter is the only fat in it, and the recipe has it skimmed off before straining.
- The blanching stepTwo minutes in boiling water then straight into cold water takes the harshest edge off the turnips and onions; blanching and cooling before the long simmer also helps towards a clearer stock.
- Butter is unmeasuredNo quantity is given. Two to three tablespoons for the full batch is enough; it is there to carry aroma, not to enrich, and it comes off again before straining.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThe hinge of the recipe. A rolling boil works the butter and vegetable solids into the liquid and tends to turn the stock cloudy, which defeats the purpose of a white one. Aim for occasional bubbles over three hours.
- Silk sieveA fine-mesh conical strainer lined with a double layer of damp muslin does the same job. Let it drip rather than pressing the vegetables through.
- StorageThis has no gelatine to protect it. Cool it quickly, refrigerate up to three days, or freeze in pint portions. Salt lightly here, since it will be reduced further in sauces.
Maigre cookery — from the French for lean or thin — is the survival in nineteenth-century English kitchens of the Catholic fast-day calendar, which barred meat and meat broth on Fridays, during Lent and on assorted vigils. Grand French kitchens kept a parallel set of foundations for those days, and this vegetable essence belongs to that tradition, so that a cook could produce a white sauce or a clear soup without breaking the fast. The distinction between white and brown stocks that the last line insists on was structural to the period's sauce-making: an unbrowned foundation was the base for béchamel, velouté and the pale creamed soups, while browned bones and caramelised vegetables went to espagnole and the brown gravies. "Essence" here means simply a long-simmered concentrate rather than any distilled or bottled preparation, a usage now largely gone from English cookbooks.