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Stock, Browning For
There are various ways of browning stock. The best of all is to let it boil to a glaze when making it, and then to let it colour itself over the fire. Stock made from bones cannot be thus coloured, and it is therefore necessary to impart a brown look to it by other means. The addition of Bovril answers the purpose slightly, but not always sufficiently. Burnt onions and colouring-balls may be bought, which are manufactured expressly for this end, but they often impart an unpleasant flavour to the soup. Brown thickening may be used when it is wished that the stock should be thickened as well as browned, though it must be remembered that after it is added the stock must simmer by the side of the fire, that it may throw up the fat, which should be removed. Liquid browning, which can be bottled and used as required, may be made as follows. Put half a pound of moist sugar into a stewpan, and let it remain over a gentle fire till it is melted. Keep stirring it with a wooden spoon till it is almost black, then pour upon it a pint of water, and let it remain until dissolved. Three or four drops will colour a pint of stock.
The bulk of the entry surveys Victorian shortcuts for darkening a pale bone stock; the only actual formula is the liquid browning at the end, which is caramel colour and still worth making.
- The hinge: how dark is dark enoughTake the sugar past amber to the point where it is almost black and smells sharp rather than sweet. The book gives no temperature and near-black is well past ordinary caramel, so judge by eye and nose. Stop short and you get a syrup that sweetens the soup; go too far and the bitterness carries through even at four drops.
- Adding the waterA pint of water poured onto near-black sugar will erupt in steam and spit molten caramel. Use a deep pan, warm the water first, take the pan off the heat, and pour down the side with your hand and face clear. Then return it to a low flame to dissolve the hardened lumps.
- Moist sugar"Moist sugar" is unrefined soft brown sugar. Granulated white works equally well here and lets you judge the colour more accurately.
- Yield and keepingHalf a pound of sugar and a pint of water gives roughly a pint of thin dark syrup — enough to colour many gallons of stock. Bottled and capped it keeps well, though the syrup is not concentrated enough to be self-preserving, so check it before use.
- Bovril and colouring-ballsBovril is still sold and behaves as the book says: it adds savour and a little colour but cannot darken a stock on its own. Commercial "colouring-balls" of burnt onion have vanished; the modern equivalents are gravy browning and caramel colour (E150), both essentially this recipe in a bottle.
- Browning the stock properly insteadThe first method described — reducing to a glaze and letting it colour in the pan — builds colour into the stock itself rather than adding it. The nearest modern habit is roasting the bones and vegetables hard before they go in the pot, which likewise gives colour and flavour together, as no added caramel does.
- "Throw up the fat"The instruction to hold thickened stock at a bare simmer at the side of the fire is real technique: flour-thickened liquid releases fat slowly to the surface, where it can be skimmed. On a modern hob, keep it just below a simmer with the pan set off-centre so the fat gathers on the cooler side.
Cassell's is writing at the point where the professional French practice of building colour into a stock met the reality of British domestic cooking, where stock was often made from whatever bones the joint left behind and had no depth of colour to begin with. Caramel had been used to darken soups, sauces, gravies and beer for well over a century by 1900, and the modern label ingredient "caramel colour" is a distant descendant of pans of sugar cooked to near-black like this one, though it is now manufactured by rather different means. The mention of Bovril dates the entry usefully he 1880s and by the 1890s had become a standard kitchen crutch, which is why a dictionary of cookery could refer to it by brand name without explanation.