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Vegetable Stock
If vegetable stock be required for a soup maigre, proceed as follows. Cut into small pieces a large carrot, an onion, two lettuces, about a dozen of the outer sticks of celery, and a parsnip. Put these into a stewpan with a slice of butter or dripping, cover the stewpan closely, and let its contents sweat till they begin to soften. Pour upon them as much boiling water as will entirely cover them, add a little salt and pepper, and let them stew softly till they are reduced to pulp. Skim and strain the liquor, and put it aside for use. Time, about four hours.
A straightforward sweat-then-simmer vegetable broth, written for a period kitchen where stock sat at the back of the range all afternoon. The proportions are sound; only the timing needs adjusting.
- Soup maigreA "lean" soup — one made without meat, for fast days and Fridays. That is why a vegetable stock is given alongside the meat stocks.
- The sweat is the hingeCovering the pan tightly and letting the vegetables soften in butter or dripping before any water goes in is what gives this stock body and sweetness. Skip it and you have vegetable water. Keep the heat low enough that nothing colours.
- Four hours is too longVegetables give up most of what they have in well under an hour, and after that carrot and celery can turn dull and slightly bitter. Ninety minutes at a bare simmer is generous.
- QuantitiesA large carrot, one onion, a parsnip, two lettuces and a dozen outer celery sticks come to roughly 2 lb of vegetables. The original gives no water measure — only as much boiling water as will cover them — so the yield will vary with the pan and the length of the stew.
- LettuceNot a mistake — lettuce was a common soup vegetable in this period, and it adds a mild green sweetness. The recipe calls for two whole lettuces, cut into small pieces.
- StrainingStrain but do not force the pulp through, or the stock clouds. Let it drip, then press only lightly if you want the last of it.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was ordinary kitchen fat, but it makes the stock non-maigre in the strict sense. Butter or oil keeps it meatless.
- Seasoning and keepingSalt lightly at this stage since the stock will be reduced later in whatever soup it becomes. Refrigerate up to four days, or freeze in measured portions.
"Maigre" is simply French for lean, and a soupe maigre was food for the many days of abstinence in the Catholic and Anglican calendars, when meat broth was forbidden but a good soup was still expected. English cookery books carried the term from the eighteenth century onward, and by the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the 1870s a meatless stock was as much a matter of thrift and invalid cookery as of religion — it used up outer celery sticks and coarse lettuce leaves. The method itself, sweating vegetables in fat under a tight lid before adding liquid, is close to what French cooks call faire suer, and something like it is still done in modern stock-making; what has gone is the assumption that a pot could be left at the side of the range for half a day at no cost, because the fire was burning anyway.