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Soups and Broths, Dr. Kitchener On
The cook must pay particular attention to her stewpans, soup-kettles, etc., which should be examined every time they are used. The prudent housewife will carefully examine the condition of them herself at least once a month. Their covers also must be kept perfectly clean and well tinned, and the stewpans not only on the inside but about a couple of inches on the outside; many mischiefs arise from their getting out of repair, and if not kept nicely tinned all your good work will be in vain, the broths and soups will look green and dirty, taste bitter and poisonous, and will be spoiled both for the eye and palate, and your credit will be lost. The health and even life of the family depends upon this, and the cook may be sure her employers had rather pay the tinman's bill than the doctor's; therefore attention to this cannot fail to engage the regard of the mistress. If a servant has the misfortune to scorch or blister the tinning of her pan--which will sometimes happen to the most careful cook--I advise her by all means immediately to acquaint her employers, who will thank her cordially for mentioning an accident and censure her deservedly if she conceal it.
Take care to be properly provided with sieves and tamis cloths, spoons and ladles; make it a rule without an exception never to use them till they are well cleaned and thoroughly dried, nor any stewpans, etc., without first washing them out with boiling water, and rubbing them well with a dry cloth and a little bran, to clean them from grease, sand, etc., or any bad smell they may have got since they were last used: never neglect this. Though we do not suppose our cook to be such a naughty slut as to wilfully neglect her broth-pots, etc., yet we may recommend her to wash them immediately, and take care they are thoroughly dried at the fire before they are put by, and to keep them in a dry place, for damp will rust and destroy them very soon--attend to this the first moment you can spare after the dinner is sent up.
Never put by any soup, gravy, etc., in metal utensils; in which never keep anything longer than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of cookery--the acid, vegetables, fat, etc., employed in making soups, etc., are capable of dissolving such utensils, therefore stone or earthen vessels should be used for this purpose.
Stewpans, soup-pots, and preserving-pans, with thick and round bottoms (such as sauce-pans are made with) will wear twice as long, and are cleaned with half the trouble, as those whose sides are soldered to the bottom, of which sand and grease get into the joined part, and cooks say that it is next to an impossibility to dislodge it, even if their nails are as long as Nebuchadnezzar's.
Take care that the lids fit as close as possible, that the broth, soup, and sauces, etc., may not waste by evaporation. They are good for nothing unless they fit tight enough to keep the steam in and smoke out. Stewpans and saucepans should be always bright on the upper rim, where the fire does not burn them; but to scour them all over is not only giving the cook needless trouble, but wearing out the vessels.
Cultivate habits of regularity, cleanliness, etc., in all your business, which you will then get through easily and comfortably; I do not mean the restless spirit of Molidusta, "the tidy one," who is anon, anon, sir, frisking about in a whirlpool of bustle and confusion, and is always dirty--under pretence of being always cleaning.
Lean juicy beef, mutton, or veal, form the basis of broth; procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and as fresh killed as possible. Stale meat will make broth grouty and bad tasted, and fat meat is wasted. This only applies to those broths which are required to be perfectly clear. Fat and clarified drippings may be so combined with vegetable mucilage as to afford, at the small cost of one penny per quart, a nourishing and palatable soup, fully adequate to satisfy appetite and support strength--this will open a new source to those benevolent housekeepers who are disposed to relieve the poor; will show the industrious classes how much they have it in their power to assist themselves, and rescue them from being objects of charity, dependent on the precarious bounty of others, by teaching them how they may obtain a cheap, abundant, salubrious, and agreeable aliment for themselves and families. This soup has the advantage of being very easily and very soon made, with no more fuel than is necessary to warm a room; those who have not tasted it cannot imagine what a salubrious, savoury, and satisfying meal is produced by the judicious combination of cheap homely ingredients. The art of composing a rich soup is so to proportion the several ingredients one to another that no particular taste be stronger than the rest, but to produce such a fine harmonious relish that the whole is delightful. This requires that judicious combination of the materials which constitute the chef d'oeuvre of culinary science. In the first place, take care that the roots and herbs be perfectly well cleaned; proportion the water to the quantity of meat and other ingredients--generally a pound of meat to a quart of water for soups, and double that quantity for gravies. If they stew gently, little more water need be put in at first than is expected at the end--for when the pot is covered quite close, and the fire gentle, very little is wasted. Gentle stewing is incomparably the best--the meat is more tender and the soup better flavoured. It is of the first importance that the cover of a soup-kettle should fit very close, or the broth will evaporate before you are aware of it. The most essential parts are soon evaporated by quick boiling, without any benefit, except to fatten the fortunate cook who inhales them. An evident proof that these exhalations possess the most restorative qualities is, that the cook, who in general is the least eater, is as generally the fattest person in the family--from continually being surrounded by the quintessence of all the food she dresses, whereof she sends to her master only the fibres and calcinations, who is consequently thin, gouty, and the victim of diseases arising from insufficient nourishment. It is not only the fibres of the meat which nourish us, but the juices they contain, and these are not only extracted, but exhaled, if it be boiled fast in an open vessel. A succulent soup can never be made but in a well-closed vessel, which preserves the nutritive parts by preventing their dissipation. This is a fact of which every intelligent person will soon perceive the importance. Place your soup-pot over a moderate fire, which will make the water hot without causing it to boil, for at least half an hour. If the water boils immediately, it will not penetrate the meat and cleanse it from the clotted blood and other matters which ought to go off in scum; the meat will be hardened all over by violent heat, will shrink up as if it were scorched, and give hardly any gravy. On the contrary, by keeping the water a certain time heating without boiling, the meat swells, becomes tender, its fibres are dilated, and it yields a quantity of scum, which must be taken off as soon as it appears.
It is not till after a good half hour's hot infusion that we may mend the fire and make the pot boil; still continue to remove the scum, and when no more appears, put in the vegetables, etc. and a little salt. These will cause more scum to rise, which must be taken off immediately, then cover the pot very closely, and place it at a proper distance from the fire, where it will boil very gently, and equally, and by no means fast.
By quick and strong boiling the volatile and finest parts of the ingredients are evaporated, and fly off with the steam, and the coarser parts are rendered soluble; so you lose the good and get the bad.
Soups will generally take from three to six hours.
Prepare your broths and soups the evening before you want them. This will give you more time to attend to the rest of your dinner the next day; and when the soup is cold the fat may be much more easily and completely removed from the surface of it; when you decant it, take care not to disturb the settlings at the bottom of the vessel, which are so fine that they will escape through a sieve, or even through a tamis, which is the best strainer: the soups appear smoother and finer, and it is much easier cleaned than any sieve. If you strain it while it is hot, pass it through a clean tamis or napkin previously soaked in cold water--the coldness of this will coagulate the fat, and only suffer the pure broth to pass through.
The full flavour of the ingredients can only be extracted by very long and slow simmering, during which take care to prevent evaporation by covering the pot as close as possible. The best stew-pot is a "digester." Clear soups must be perfectly transparent, thickened soups about the consistency of rich cream; and remember that thickened soups require nearly double the quantity of seasoning. The piquance of spice, etc., is as much blunted by the flour and butter as the spirit of rum is by the addition of sugar and acid; so they are less salubrious, without being more savoury, from the additional quantity of spice, etc. that is smuggled into the stomach. To thicken and give body to soups and sauces the following materials are used--they must be gradually mixed with the soup till thoroughly incorporated with it, and it should have at least half an hour's gentle simmering after; if it is at all lumpy, pass it through a tamis or a fine sieve--bread-raspings, bread, isinglass, potato-mucilage, fat-skimmings and flour, or flour and butter, or flour, barley, rice, or oatmeal and water rubbed well together. To their very rich gravies, etc., the French add the white meat of partridges, pigeons, or fowls, pounded to a pulp and rubbed through a sieve, a piece of beef which has been boiled to make broth pounded in like manner with a bit of butter and flour, and gradually incorporated with the gravy or soup, will be found a satisfactory substitute for these more expensive articles. Meat from which broth has been made, and all its juice has been extracted, is then excellently well prepared for potting, and is quite as good or better than that which has been baked till it is dry; indeed, if it be pounded and seasoned in the usual manner it will be an elegant and savoury luncheon or supper, and costs nothing but the trouble of preparing it, which is very little, and a relish is procured for sandwiches, etc., of what has heretofore been by the poorest housekeeper considered the perquisite of the cat. Keep some spare broth, lest your soup-liquor waste in boiling and get too thick, and for gravy for your made dishes, various sauces, etc., for many of which it is a much better basis than melted butter. The soup of mock-turtle and the other thickened soups will supply you with a thick gravy sauce for poultry, fish, ragouts, etc., and by a little management of this sort you may generally contrive to have plenty of good gravies and good sauces with very little trouble or expense.
If soup is too thin or too weak, take off the cover of your soup-pot and let the soup boil till some of the watery part of it has evaporated, or else add some of the thickening materials we have before mentioned; and have at hand some plain browning. This simple preparation is much better than the compounds bearing that name, as it colours sauce or soup without much interfering with its flavour, and is a much better way of colouring them than burning the surface of the meat.
When soups and gravies are kept from day to day in hot weather they should be warmed up every day, and put into fresh-scalded tureens or pans, and placed in a cool cellar; in temperate weather every other day may be enough. We hope we have now put the common cook into possession of the whole arcana of soup-making, without much trouble to herself, or expense to her employers; it need not be said in future that an Englishman only knows how to make soup in his stomach, by swilling down a large quantity of ale or porter to quench the thirst occasioned by the meat he eats. John Bull may now make his soup secundum artem, and save his principal viscera a great deal of trouble.