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Ten Peppercorns (Two quarts of Second Stock)
Two quarts of Second Stock.
Fifteen drops of Lemon Juice.
A few grains of Cayenne Pepper.
Two ounces of Flour.
Two ounces of Butter.
Salt. Clean the giblets carefully and put them in a stewpan of boiling water to blanch for five minutes. Then put them into cold water, wash and scrape them, and then cut them into pieces about an inch and a half in length. Put the pieces of giblets, the stock, and the vegetables (all cleaned and cut up small) into a stewpan, add the bouquet, cloves and peppercorns, and let the whole boil for two hours, skimming occasionally. Then take out the best pieces of giblets, trim them neatly, but let the stock and remainder of giblets boil half an hour longer. Now melt the butter in a stewpan, put in the flour, and fry for a few minutes; add the stock strained, the lemon-juice, cayenne and the trimmed pieces of giblets, and let the whole boil twenty minutes.
Potage à l'Américaine.
To one quart of white stock add, when boiling, one tablespoonful of prepared crushed or ground tapioca; let it boil ten minutes, then add half a pint of purée of tomato, a little salt, and a pinch of castor sugar.
This soup is better if made with fresh tomatoes.
Two soups have run together on this page: a giblet soup whose ingredient list has been truncated (the title "Ten Peppercorns" is the tail end of it), and a short tomato-tapioca soup tacked on at the end. The method for the giblet soup is complete enough to follow if you supply the missing quantities.
- The missing ingredientsThe printed list begins mid-sentence, so the giblets, vegetables, bouquet garni and cloves are never quantified. Reckon on the giblets of two or three birds, one onion, one carrot, a stick of celery, a bouquet of parsley, thyme and bay, and two cloves for two quarts of stock.
- Second stockGenerally a second extraction: the bones and trimmings covered again with water after the first stock is drawn off and simmered a second time, what French kitchens call remouillage. It is thinner and less gelatinous than first stock. Ordinary chicken or veal stock, lightly diluted, stands in for it.
- GibletsNecks, hearts, gizzards and wing tips. Livers are best excluded — they cloud the soup and go grainy over two and a half hours. Gizzards must be split and the gritty inner lining peeled away before blanching.
- The blanch mattersFive minutes in boiling water then straight into cold draws out the blood and scum that would otherwise grey the soup. Skipping it gives a muddy, livery broth no amount of skimming will fix.
- Roux and pouringTwo ounces each of butter and flour to two quarts is a light thickening, roughly a thin velouté. Fry the flour a few minutes without colour, then add the strained stock hot and in stages, whisking, or it will lump.
- Fifteen drops of lemon juiceAn eighth to a quarter of a teaspoon. It is a seasoning correction rather than a flavour; here it goes in with the strained stock and boils for the final twenty minutes.
- TimingGizzards and necks want the full two hours to become tender; hearts are done sooner. Pull the pieces you intend to serve as garnish when they yield to a knife, then let the rest keep giving to the stock.
- YieldTwo quarts before reduction, so six to eight servings as a first course.
- Potage à l'AméricaineA separate recipe. "Prepared crushed or ground tapioca" is what we would buy as tapioca starch or very fine pearl tapioca; instant pearls added to a boiling quart will thicken faster than ten minutes, so watch it. Castor sugar is superfine sugar, and the pinch corrects the acidity of the tomato purée — with ripe fresh tomatoes you may not need it.
Giblet soup was a thrift dish that ended up on grand menus. Poulterers sold giblets cheaply, or they came free with the bird, and a kitchen roasting geese and capons in quantity had a steady supply of necks and gizzards that would otherwise be wasted. Cooked long and finished with a roux and a squeeze of lemon, they yielded a soup rich enough to serve at a dinner of several courses, which is how it earns its place in a book of "high class" cookery. The second recipe belongs to a different fashion entirely: late-Victorian and Edwardian menus were fond of dressing dishes with national labels, and "à l'Américaine" was applied variously, most famously to lobster dishes, though in a soup it often signalled tomato. Tapioca, imported from cassava grown in the tropics, was among the light thickeners used for clear-ish soups of the period, said to give body without the cloudiness of flour.