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Soup Stock
The making of stock, frequently looked upon by the young housekeeper as too intricate and troublesome to undertake, becomes as simple as many other matters of cooking when divested of the seeming mystery surrounding it-a mystery arising only from the lack of a few explicit directions combined with the same amount of care and forethought necessary for success in other departments of culinary art.
Stock is simply the concentrated juices of meat or fowl extracted by the process of long and gentle simmering. It is used as a nutritive basis for soup, and while there are certain rules to be followed, ingenuity and good judgment, combined with the ingredients at hand, will make it easy to produce a variety as acceptable in the matter of soups as in the rest of the menu. Into the stock-kettle many a little left-over of meat or fowl or the bone of a steak or chop should find its way. To the carcass of a fowl may be added a couple of pounds of veal with a good-sized knuckle of the same, for a white stock; brown stock may be made from a combination of meats and fowl. In the making of soups from stock, cooked vegetables, a little meat or vegetable hash, or even a bit of cereal left from the morning meal, will add substance to the thick soup; and all of these will contribute to the delicious flavor, in which no single one predominates, that makes the good soup so vastly different from its opposite-the one indifferently seasoned or too weak. Stock may be made the same day it is used, but, rather than attempt this, it is better to make one of the emergency soups, for which directions are given elsewhere. A number of these may be made without stock. For cooking stock a steam-tight kettle is all important, as it is necessary that there should be no waste by evaporation. If a soup-digester is considered too expensive, a granite-ware or porcelain-lined kettle with a tight-fitting cover will answer every purpose. Do not use an iron kettle if it can be avoided; besides being heavy to handle, it rusts easily and is more difficult to clean.
Vegetables should not be added to stock if it is to be kept for long, as their juices cause it to ferment sooner. In summer it will be necessary to bring to a boil and skim the stock every day or two to prevent its souring. To prepare meats for stock, trim off all dried edges or useless bits, those that show any possibility of taint, or that have come in contact with rusty meat-hooks. Rinse off the outside very quickly in cold water and wipe with a clean cloth. Do not wash the meat after cutting it up; the inside is clean, and each washing will result in some loss of the juices. Cut the meat in small pieces; crack or saw the bones to allow quicker and more thorough extraction of the juices of the meat and the gelatine of the bones. The marrow should be removed from the inside of the bones and placed in the kettle first; then pack in the meat and bones and cover with cold water in the proportion of 1 quart of water to 1 pound of meat.
When cooked meats are to be used, carefully trim from the steak or roast any parts of fat or bone that have been burned in broiling or roasting, as these will give a bitter flavor to the stock.
After adding the water to the meat and bones, let it stand for half an hour or more to allow the juices to be drawn out before heating; then put the kettle over a slow fire and bring the contents to a gentle simmer. Never let a soup boil rapidly, as the rapid boiling hardens the outside of the meat and prevents the escape of the juices, while gentle simmering extracts the nutritive qualities.
Do not skim the stock as the scum begins to rise. This scum is simply the blood and juices which at this stage of the cooking coagulate and rise to the surface; a little later it will disintegrate and be absorbed in the liquor; to skim and throw it away is to lose a portion of the very thing we are trying to procure--the nutritive elements of the meat.
After simmering is well begun, add the sea soning in the proportion of 1 teaspoonful of salt to a quart of water, a half saltspoon of ground white pepper, a celery root, or a tiny bit of celery seed, or the tops of celery. The leaves of celery, by the way, need never be thrown out, for, if not needed at once, they may be dried like any other savory herb, and put away for future use. Boiled in the stock before straining, they serve the same purpose as the seed. Add a sprig of parsley, and, if cloves or allspice are used, the whole ones are better, as they strain out, and the flavor is better than in the ground spices, however pure they are supposed to be. In the city markets "soup bunches" may be had for a penny or two, consisting of a sprig of parsley, a small carrot, a young onion, and whatever savory herbs are in the market, but the housekeeper is fortunate if she can have her own parsley bed in her back yard or a box of it growing on her back porch, as it is one of the most useful of seasonings and garnishings. A mixture of dried sweet herbs put up in bottles, to be found at first-class grocers, is a convenience, as it saves the trouble of measuring out each one separately. A teaspoonful of this to one quart of stock is the right proportion. When the meat has cooked until reduced to shreds, or drops from the bones, leaving them clean, strain the stock into the stock jar of earthen or stone ware. A rather fine strainer that fits the jar, or a colander into which a piece of cheesecloth is laid, should be used. Dip the stock from the kettle into the strainer, allowing it to run through without pressing or squeezing. By letting it stand a short time all the liquor will run through, leaving the scraps quite dry. These are of no further use.
Stand the jar where the stock will cool quickly, and when cool put in the refrigerator; the fat will rise to the top and form a cake hard enough to remove without trouble by running a knife around the edge of the jar. If a good proportion of bone has been used, the stock, when cold, will be a stiff jelly. The cake of fat on the top will help the stock to keep by excluding the air, and need not be removed at once, as a portion of it may be cut and the necessary amount of stock taken out. The remaining stock should be heated to allow the cake to form on the top again. When the fat is taken off it should be clarified with raw potato and added to the beef drippings for frying and sauteing.
The stock thus made will be sufficiently clear for most soups, but it must be clarified if a very clear one is to be made.
To clarify stock remove every particle of fat, beat the white of one egg for every quart of stock, add this and the crushed shell of the egg to the stock while the latter is cold, mixing it in very thoroughly. Put it over the fire and stir constantly while heating, so that the egg will not settle. When it has reached the boiling point leave it to simmer for ten minutes; a thick scum will then have formed. Take the stock from the fire and add a half cup of cold water, let it stand a few minutes, and strain through a colander in which a fine napkin or other thin cloth, wrung out of cold water, has been laid. Do not pour the stock directly on the napkin or the scum will clog it, but let it first run through a fine wire strainer which will catch the scum and the shells. Either before or after clarifying, this stock is ready for an almost endless variety of soups or consommes by the addition of cooked vegetables, macaroni, spaghetti or vermicelli, rice or barley--or it may be used in gravies and side-dishes.
If dark soup is desired, it may be made by the addition of a little caramel or dark roux, or by browning some sliced vegetables or diced fresh meat in butter and adding it to the stock.
To make a white stock, use veal and chicken in about equal parts; follow the directions for beef in preparing the veal, cut up and joint the chicken as for stewing, and proceed as for the other stock, omitting in the seasoning cloves or any spices that will darken the stock, and using celery.
This is a method rather than a fixed recipe, and it holds up well. A few of its proportions and storage instructions need adjusting for a modern kitchen.
- Hold it below a boilThe hinge of the whole thing is the temperature. Keep the pot at 180-190F, where a bubble breaks the surface only every second or two; a rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the liquid past rescue. On an electric element that usually means the lowest setting with the lid slightly ajar.
- Water to meatOne quart of water to one pound of meat and bone is still the working ratio. Fill so the solids are just covered by an inch, and top up with hot water if the level drops, rather than letting bones sit dry.
- Cooking timeThe book gives none. Beef and veal bones need 4 to 6 hours to reach the point where the meat shreds and the bones come clean; a chicken carcass and cut-up bird need 2 to 3.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning here is a scant pinch of white pepper per quart. The teaspoon of salt per quart is worth cutting back or leaving out entirely if the stock will later be reduced for sauce, since the salt concentrates as the liquid does.
- The scumSkim it. The grey foam that rises in the first twenty minutes is coagulated blood protein, and while it does eventually disperse into the liquid as the book says, it disperses as fine grey particles that dull both colour and taste. The nutritional loss is negligible by any modern reckoning.
- VesselGranite-ware means enamelled steel. Any heavy stainless or enamelled pot with a well-fitting lid does the same job. Bare cast iron is still worth avoiding for long simmers, less for rust than for the metallic edge it can give a delicate white stock.
- Storage, not the fat capThe sealed cake of fat and the daily reboiling belong to a house without reliable refrigeration. Chill the strained stock quickly in a shallow pan, refrigerate it within two hours, and use it inside three or four days or freeze it. Do not keep a jar on the counter and revive it by boiling.
- ClarifyingOne egg white and its crushed shell per quart, whisked into cold stock, is the classic raft. Stir until it is nearly at a simmer, then stop stirring and leave it alone for ten minutes, or the raft will break up. The splash of cold water at the end helps it settle before straining.
- YieldThree pounds of meat and bone with three quarts of water will give somewhere between two and three quarts of finished stock, depending on how tightly the kettle is covered and how much the solids absorb -- a base for roughly six to eight servings of soup.
Stock of this kind is the foundation the nineteenth-century domestic manuals inherited from professional French kitchens, where the perpetually simmering marmite supplied the day's soups and sauces. The insistence on saving every trimming and bone is not thrift for its own sake so much as the economics of a household that bought meat on the bone and had no freezer: the stockpot was where the carcass finished its useful life. Two details place the page in its period. The "soup-digester" is the sealed steam vessel generally traced to Denis Papin in the 1670s and still an expensive item in the American kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, and the penny "soup bunch" of parsley, carrot and onion sold ready-tied in city markets served much the same purpose as a bouquet garni or a mirepoix. The distinction the book draws between white stock, from veal and chicken with no browning and no dark spice, and brown stock, coloured with caramel or roux, is the same division still taught today.