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Plain Brown Soup Stock
6 lbs. shin of beef 4 qts. cold water Carrot, Onion, Turnip, Celery} 1/2 cup each, cut in cubes 1/2 bay leaf 6 peppercorns 4 cloves 2 sprigs parsley 1 tablespoon salt Wipe beef with wet cloth and cut in inch cubes. Brown 1/3 of this in marrow from the marrow-bone. Put this with remaining 2/3 of meat, with bone and fat, into kettle. Add salt and water. Let stand at least one hour. Then heat very slowly to boiling point. Reduce temperature, cover, and let simmer for six or seven hours. Add vegetables and seasonings the last hour of cooking. Strain and cool quickly.
A classic long-simmered brown stock, built on shin of beef and a marrow bone. Nothing here is obsolete, but a few of the instructions carry more weight than they appear to.
- Never let it boilKeep it at a simmer -- The recipe does bring the pot "very slowly to boiling point," but the hinge is what follows: reduce, cover, simmer. A sustained rolling boil emulsifies fat and agitates the solids, and the stock turns cloudy and greasy in a way no straining will fix. Hold it at a bare tremble, around 185-195F, with the surface barely moving.
- Shin of beefSold now as beef shank, foreshank, or osso buco cross-cuts. Ask the butcher to saw the bone so the marrow is accessible; the recipe assumes a marrow bone is part of the six pounds, not additional to it.
- Browning only a thirdThis is deliberate, not an economy. Browned meat gives colour and roast flavour, unbrowned meat gives cleaner body and gelatin. If you brown the lot you get a darker, heavier stock.
- The cold-water soakThe hour of standing in cold water before heating draws soluble protein and flavour out of the meat rather than sealing it in. It also lets the scum coagulate and rise in one raft as the pot comes up to temperature, so skim once at the start and leave it alone.
- Vegetables in the last hourWorth respecting. Carrot, turnip and celery held for seven hours go sulphurous and sweet-flat; one hour is enough to take everything usable out of them.
- Cool quickly, and whyFour quarts of warm stock sitting on the counter is the textbook case for bacterial growth in the 40-140F range. Strain into a shallow pan or set the pot in an ice bath, get it down to around 70F within about two hours and into the refrigerator from there, then lift the set fat off the top the next day.
- Yield and useExpect roughly 2 1/2 to 3 quarts after seven hours of reduction and straining. Refrigerated, treat it as a three-to-four-day stock; at a tablespoon of salt in four quarts it is lightly seasoned, so taste before using it as a base for anything further reduced.
- Seasoning quantitiesHalf a bay leaf, six peppercorns and four cloves is restrained for a gallon of liquid, which is the point of a "plain" stock. Cloves in particular dominate quickly; do not round up.
Gold Medal, a Washburn-Crosby flour brand, gave away cook books to sell flour, and a promotional book of this era could assume a household stock pot rather than treat it as optional. "Plain brown" distinguishes it from white stock made with veal and no browning, and from the consommes and bouillons built on top of it; the same pot underlies gravies, braises and the made-over dishes that used up cold meat. The technique is straight out of the domestic-science teaching of the period, where the cold-water start and the slow rise to a simmer were taught as chemistry rather than custom, and Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book gives a comparable formula, though it differs in water quantity and calls for a longer list of herbs. The shin, full of connective tissue and cheap because it is tough, is exactly the cut that seven hours converts into gelatin, and the marrow bone doing duty as the browning fat is a small piece of thrift typical of the genre.