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Soup, Cheshire
The following is a very old Cheshire recipe for a good and inexpensive soup. It dates back as far as the sixteenth century. Put a hock of beef into a gallon of cold water, simmer it gently for six hours, taking care that it is well skimmed. Put in some thyme, sweet marjoram, and celery, all tied in a bunch, as also a couple of onions cut fine. Skim off all the fat, and season with pepper and salt and a little ketchup. By omitting the above seasoning, this soup may be turned into all kinds of soups, by adding the vegetables to give the flavour required.
This is a beef stock dressed lightly enough to serve as broth. Two things decide whether it works: a genuine bone-in shin cut, and disciplined skimming in the first hour.
- The hockA beef hock or hough is the shin, sold now as shin on the bone, osso buco cut, or leg. About 3 to 4 lb suits a gallon of water. Marrow and connective tissue are the point of it, so a boneless piece of stewing beef will give you a thin, dull liquid.
- A gallonCassell's is a British book, so this is an imperial gallon, 160 fl oz or about 4.5 litres. If you are working from a US gallon of 128 fl oz you will get a more concentrated, more strongly seasoned soup, which is no disaster.
- KetchupIn a nineteenth-century English kitchen ketchup meant mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark salty condiment used much as we use Worcestershire sauce or soy. Tomato ketchup will sweeten the broth and shift it somewhere else entirely. A teaspoon or two of mushroom ketchup, or of Worcestershire, gives the intended effect.
- Cold water, gentle heatStarting cold and never letting it boil is what keeps the liquid clear; a rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds everything. Hold it at a bare tremble, and skim the grey scum off repeatedly during the first hour, when most of it rises.
- When to add the herbsSix hours will cook thyme, marjoram and celery to nothing. Tie the bunch and drop it in for the last hour to hour and a half, and add the onion at the same stage unless you want it dissolved into the broth.
- Fat and saltThe instruction to skim the fat is easiest carried out cold: chill the strained stock and lift the set cap off. Salt only after that, and after any reduction, or a broth simmered down for six hours will overshoot.
- YieldHow much you finish with depends on the pot, the lid and how hard it simmers; expect appreciably less than the gallon you started with, enough for six to eight servings, plus the shin meat, which is worth shredding back in or keeping for a separate dish.
- Using it as a baseThe closing sentence is the practical value here. Left unseasoned, this is plain stock: build vegetable soups, barley broth or a brown onion soup on it, or reduce it further for sauces.
Cassell's claim of a sixteenth-century pedigree should be read as the sort of thing Victorian compilers said about any long-simmered regional dish rather than as a documented date, but the method genuinely is old: a cheap jointed cut, a great deal of water, a bunch of sweet herbs, and hours of unattended heat is how household broth was made in England for centuries. Cheshire's association is with its cattle and dairying country, where a beef hock left over from a jointed carcass was among the least valuable pieces and the one that rewarded slow cooking most. The instruction to hold back the seasoning so the same pot can become "all kinds of soups" is the frugal logic of a household that varied one basic stock by what came in from the garden.