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Stock Made from Bones
Take the bones of a leg of mutton or of a piece of beef weighing seven or eight pounds before cooking, or if these are not at hand, take two-pennyworth of fresh bones. Break them up into small pieces, and put them into a saucepan with three quarts of cold water. Bring this gently to the boil, and carefully remove the scum as it rises. Draw the saucepan to the side, and let the liquor simmer gently for five or six hours. Pour it into an earthenware jar, and the next day remove the fat from the top, and pour the broth back free from sediment. Put with it a large carrot, a handful of fresh parsley, a large onion into which two or three cloves have been stuck, a few outer sticks of celery, or about as much celery-seed as will lie on a threepenny-piece, a turnip, if young, a couple of leeks, if they can be obtained, a lump of sugar, and a little salt and cayenne. Simmer the soup again, and if necessary add cold water, a little at a time, to keep up the quantity to two quarts. Simmer all gently together an hour and a half longer; strain the liquor off again, and stir in with it a good tea-spoonful of Bovril. If it is necessary to clarify the stock, do not put in the Bovril until the stock has been made clear. If expedition is desired, the vegetables and the bones may be boiled altogether. Time, five hours the first day, one hour and a half the next. Sufficient for two quarts of stock.
A two-day bone stock of the standard Victorian kitchen type: bones and water alone on the first day, aromatics on the second. Most of it translates directly, but the units, the overnight standing and the Bovril need comment.
- The hinge: bones first, vegetables secondThe long first simmer extracts gelatine and marrow, which needs hours; the vegetables need only ninety minutes and turn muddy and sour if held longer. The note that both may be boiled together "if expedition is desired" is a real concession in quality, not an equivalent method.
- Imperial quartsAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 1.14 litres, so three quarts is roughly 3.4 L of water and the finished yield of two quarts is about 2.3 L — a little more than the US measure suggests.
- Twopennyworth of bonesMeaningless as a quantity now. Work from the first option instead: the bones of a leg of mutton, or those from a 7-8 lb beef joint. Ask a butcher for beef or lamb bones and have them sawn rather than trying to break them at home.
- As much celery-seed as will lie on a threepenny-pieceThe silver threepence was about 16 mm across, so this is a small pinch — around a quarter-teaspoon. Celery seed is assertive; err low.
- BovrilA concentrated beef extract, still sold, added here purely for savour and colour at the end. Marmite is not a substitute in flavour; a good beef extract or a spoonful of reduced glace de viande is closer. The instruction to hold it back until after clarifying is sound, since the extract clouds the pot.
- Standing overnightThe earthenware jar in a cold larder was the period's refrigeration. Chill the strained stock quickly — a shallow pan, or the pot in a sink of iced water — and refrigerate it. The fat cap lifts off just as easily from a cold fridge stock.
- Skimming and the simmer"Draw the saucepan to the side" means moving the pan to a cooler part of the range, away from direct heat, so the liquor barely trembles. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the stock, which is why the recipe later has to allow for clarifying.
- Yield and useTwo quarts of unsalted-to-lightly-salted base stock, intended as the foundation for soups and sauces rather than drinking as it stands. It will set to a firm jelly if the bones were good.
Bone stock was infrastructure: the thing a well-run household made from the week's carcasses before it made anything else. The two-day rhythm reflects a kitchen without refrigeration, where a stockpot standing in a cold larder overnight was the only practical way to lift the fat cleanly. What dates the page is the Bovril. The beef extract is generally traced to John Lawson Johnston's fluid beef of the 1870s, sold under the Bovril name from the mid-1880s, and its appearance in a general cookery instruction -- casually, as a finishing seasoning -- shows how fast a branded convenience product could be absorbed into what the book presents as basic technique. The lump of sugar is an older habit, a corrective for the flatness of a long-boiled vegetable liquor rather than any attempt at sweetness.