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Gelatinous Soups and Jellies. Proteid Sparers: Season
SOUP 2 Reheat the soup stock in a double boiler; beat the yolk of an egg -- two are better -- add half a cup of thin cream and stir into the soup. Season as needed and stir until the egg is set, then serve at once. SOUP 3 To the stock add half to a full cup of tomato puree, serve in this way or finish as soup 1 or 2.
SOUP 4 Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter, or fat taken from the top of the stock; cook in it two tablespoonfuls of flour; add half a cup of cooked spinach, pressed through a sieve, and half a cup of the stock; stir until boiling, then stir into the rest of the stock. Season to taste. The yolk of an egg and cream may be added at the last moment. This is a most delicious soup. SOUP 5 Cooked celery, onions, peas, or asparagus may be pressed through a sieve, and from half to a full cup be used in place of the spinach in soup 4. CHICKEN STOCK OR BROTH FROM UNCOOKED FOWL Have the fowl separated into pieces at the joints; wipe the pieces with a small piece of cheese cloth wrung out of cold water; put into a saucepan, and pour on cold water to cover well the pieces of fowl; heat slowly to the boiling point, then let simmer until the meat is tender. Pour off the liquid and set it aside to become cold, then remove all of the fat. Season with salt and reheat, or use in any of the soups given above. There should be a pint of broth for each pound of chicken taken. If less broth be secured, water may be added. Use the pieces of fowl in any of the dishes given for stewed fowl. If the broth jellies when cold, scrape off the fat, then wipe the surface with tissue paper or a piece of cheese cloth wrung out of hot water. A stalk of celery and half an onion may be cooked with the fowl for flavor. SOUP FROM REMNANTS OF BEEF OR LAMB ROASTS Prepare the stock in the same manner as when the bones and remnants of roast fowl are used. Tomato puree is a good addition to this stock. Cooked macaroni, cut in rings, makes a good garnish for the soup.
CHICKEN BREAST IN JELLY Use broth from either cooked or uncooked fowl. If the broth makes a firm jelly when cold, gelatine is unnecessary. If the broth does not make a very firm jelly, add gelatine, about a level tablespoonful to a pint of broth. Soften the gelatine in one-fourth a cup of cold water, and dissolve in the broth, freed of fat and made hot. If cooked bones have been used freely in making the broth, the jelly will not be very clear. It may be clarified a little by the use of the white of an egg. Crush the shell, nicely washed before the egg is broken, and beat the white slightly, mix these through the broth and heat the whole (broth, gelatine and egg) slowly to the boiling point, stirring constantly meanwhile. Let boil five minutes, then keep hot ten minutes (without boiling) while the mixture settles. Skim carefully, then strain through a table napkin, laid over a colander or strainer. Add seasoning as is needed. Put a little of the chilled broth into a mould, set in a pan of ice and water; when nearly firm put in some thin slices of cooked chicken, add more of the chilled-and-partly "set" broth and continue with chicken and broth, until the mould or moulds are filled. Serve when firm, with lettuce, cress or celery, and salad dressing.
COOKED CHICKEN, CHOPPED AND MOULDED IN ASPIC Have ready a cup of clear soup (consomme, chicken broth or tomato and chicken bouillon) and a cup of fine-chopped, cooked chicken. Make the broth hot and in it dissolve half a level tablespoonful of gelatine that has been softened in three or four tablespoonfuls of cold water. Add a little of the gelatine mixture to the chicken. Set the moulds in ice and water, and put in the chicken and broth in alternate layers. Let each layer harden before another is poured in. Serve, turned from the moulds, with lettuce and French dressing. To unmold, immerse a mould in warm water to the height of the mixture within. With a sharp-pointed knife, loosen the mixture from the edge of the mould, then tip the mould first at one point, then at another, to let air in between the mould and the mixture, then invert over the center of the serving dish, when the mould should be lifted from the jelly. Repeat the process as needed. COFFEE JELLY In making the coffee for breakfast make one or two extra cups; strain all the coffee from the grounds when pouring the coffee at table. Let it settle, then pour off and use the top of the coffee. For two small cups (half a pint) of jelly, put half a level tablespoonful of granulated gelatine into four or five tablespoonfuls of cold water to stand about fifteen minutes; add a scant quarter of a cup of sugar and the cup of hot coffee; stir over the fire until the gelatine and sugar are dissolved, then strain into the cups. Serve with cream or a boiled custard. For fruit jellies see Chapter XIII. EMERGENCY SOUP 1/2 cup of half-inch cubes of 1 cup of half-inch potato cubes carrot 4 cups of water or broth 1/2 cup slices of celery (2 tablespoonfuls of meat ex- 1 onion, cut in shreds tract with water) 1/4 cup of butter or fat from Salt and pepper stock Melt the butter or fat and in it cook the carrot, celery and onion ten minutes. Cook the potato in boiling water five minutes, drain, rinse in cold water and drain again. Add the potato to the other vegetables with the water or broth and let cook one hour. Add the meat extract, if water was used instead of broth, with salt and pepper as needed.
A run of variations built on one thing: a well-made chicken or meat stock that sets to jelly on its own. Most of the guidance here is about handling gelatine and egg, and about the fact that the book assumes you have stock in the icebox already.
- The hinge: never boil the egg-thickened soupsIn Soup 2 the yolk and cream go in off the boil and the pan stays in the double boiler until the mixture coats a spoon, around 170-180F. Take it above that and the yolk curdles into threads that no amount of stirring will smooth.
- "Proteid sparers"The chapter title is period nutrition language. Gelatine was thought to spare dietary protein, letting the body use less meat; that idea has not survived, since gelatine lacks tryptophan and is a poor protein. Read it as a chapter about light, easily eaten dishes for invalids and small households.
- Stock that jelliesThe book's test is whether the cold broth sets by itself. A fowl simmered with its feet, wings and backbone will do it; a supermarket broth or a stock made from breast meat will not, hence the fallback of a level tablespoon of gelatine per pint. One level tablespoon of modern granulated gelatine is roughly one and a quarter envelopes, about 9 g.
- "Uncooked fowl" and the yield ruleA fowl meant an older laying hen, which is why simmering runs until the meat is merely tender rather than to a set time. A 4-5 lb chicken is the substitute; expect a pint of broth per pound of bird, and expect a supermarket bird to be done in an hour or so where a true stewing hen wants two to three.
- Egg-white clarificationModern practice is to stir the crushed shell and slightly beaten white into cool broth, on the grounds that white added to hot liquid can set in strings before it gathers the sediment. The book does the opposite: it mixes egg and shell through already-hot broth, stirs constantly to the boiling point, boils five minutes, then holds it hot without boiling for ten while the mixture settles. Skim carefully and strain gently rather than pouring.
- Setting moulds in ice waterThis is the substitute for a refrigerator, and it is still the fastest way to build a layered aspic. Each layer must be tacky-firm before the next goes on, or the chicken slices float and the layers merge.
- Coffee jelly proportionsHalf a level tablespoon of gelatine to half a pint of liquid works out to the same tablespoon-per-pint ratio the chicken jelly uses; the difference is that this one is strained into cups and served from them rather than unmoulded. Cold-brew or drip coffee works; the instruction to use only "the top of the coffee" is about leaving the grounds sediment behind.
- Emergency Soup ingredient listThe two-column table has scrambled in transcription. It reads: 1 cup half-inch potato cubes, 1/2 cup half-inch carrot cubes, 1/2 cup sliced celery, 1 onion shredded, 1/4 cup butter or stock fat, 4 cups water or broth (or 2 tablespoons meat extract with water), salt and pepper. Meat extract means Bovril or a similar concentrated paste; a bouillon cube stands in, and reduce added salt accordingly.
- YieldThe made-up dishes are small-scale: the coffee jelly is given as two small cups (half a pint), and the aspic's cup of broth with a cup of chopped chicken fills two small moulds. The stock recipes are not scaled the same way -- a whole fowl at a pint per pound gives considerably more than two servings, and the book expects the surplus to be kept.
Cooking for Two belongs to the American domestic-science movement of the early twentieth century, when household advice was written in the vocabulary of the laboratory — "proteid" for protein, foods classed by function rather than by course. Jellied broths and aspics were staples of that literature for practical reasons: a gelatinous stock showed that a cook had drawn the gelatine out of her bones, and moulded chicken in jelly turned leftovers into something presentable enough for a luncheon table. The reliance on ice and water rather than a refrigerator is consistent with the era of the domestic icebox. Coffee jelly, the odd one out here, was a popular New England dessert through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is still eaten in Japan, where it is usually traced to American and European influence on Japanese coffee culture.