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Beef Bouillon
2 or 3 pounds of beef from the round; a shank bone weighing half as much as the meat; 2 full quarts water; 1 onion; 1 stalk celery; 1 small carrot, diced; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 saltspoon pepper or 3 peppercorns; 2 or 3 cloves; 2 teaspoonfuls mixed herbs or 1/2 teaspoonful kitchen bouquet; 1 bay leaf; 1 sprig parsley; 1 teaspoonful caramel.
Dice one-half the meat, stick the cloves in the onion, and saute quickly together in marrow from the bones or a little butter until the meat is a rich brown, taking care that the onion does not burn. Cut the rest of the meat in small pieces and put all in the kettle with the bones. Add the cold water and simmer gently four or five hours, then add the seasoning, celery, and carrot, and simmer an hour longer. The quantity should then be reduced to about 3 pints. Strain and cool; remove the fat, and clear with egg in the same manner as soup stock. Heat, add the caramel, or, if preferred, one or two tablespoonfuls of sherry. Serve hot in cups.
A clear brown broth built on browned meat rather than roasted bones, meant to be served in cups as a first course or a restorative. The technique is straightforward; most of what needs translating is vocabulary and yield.
- The hinge: brown half, don't brown the restSauteing half the diced beef to a deep brown gives the bouillon its color and roast flavor, while the unbrowned half and the bones supply clean body and gelatin. Brown all of it and you get a heavier, muddier soup; brown none and it tastes flat and pale.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is the small spoon of a Victorian cruet set, roughly 1/4 teaspoon. So the seasoning is about 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper, with the salt corrected at the end after reduction.
- Shank boneWith 2-3 lb of round, ask for 1 to 1 1/2 lb of cross-cut beef shank, sawn so the marrow is exposed. Marrow is what the recipe means you to fry the meat in; if the bones are dry, butter or beef fat does the same job.
- Kitchen bouquet and caramelKitchen Bouquet is still sold: a browning sauce of caramelized sugar with vegetable flavoring, used here as a shortcut for the herbs. The teaspoon of "caramel" at the end is plain browning for color, not caramel sauce; sugar cooked dark and dissolved in a little water, or the sherry alternative, both work. Neither is necessary if the browning was done well.
- Mixed herbsPeriod "mixed" or "sweet" herb blends varied from book to book; thyme, marjoram and savory are among the common dried components. Use about 2 teaspoons total, and add it with the other seasonings in the last hour so it does not go bitter over five hours of simmering.
- Simmer means barely movingFive hours at a bare tremble, lid ajar, is the point. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and breaks up solids, and no amount of egg-white clearing afterward will fully undo a cloudy stock.
- Clearing with eggWhisk one or two egg whites, with their crushed shells, into the cold defatted broth, bring it slowly to a simmer without stirring once it clouds, hold a few minutes, then ladle carefully through a cloth-lined strainer. Skipping this step costs nothing but clarity.
- YieldReduced to 3 pints and strained, expect about 5 cups after clearing losses, which is six modest bouillon cups. It keeps four days refrigerated and freezes well; chilled, it should set to a soft jelly if the shank did its work.
Bouillon in American cookbooks of this era generally means something narrower than "broth": a clarified beef essence, browned and lightly sherried, served hot in two-handled cups at the start of dinner or handed round at receptions and to invalids. This recipe assumes the reader already knows the plain soup stock method, to which it refers the clearing. The bouillon cup itself was a fixture of turn-of-the-century china services, and bouillon cubes and powders later traded on the same name. The instruction to color the finished soup with caramel reflects an expectation that a good bouillon look a deep amber rather than gray.