Soup
There has been a good deal of needless controversy about soup-some people finding in it a dinner of itself, and some refusing it as a weak wash fit only for babes and invalids. Grimod de la Reynière said that soup is to dinner what a portico is to a palace, or an overture to an opera; it is not only the commencement of the feast, but should give an idea of what is to follow. On the other hand, the Marquis de Cussy described soup as the preface of dinner, and said that a good work can do without a preface. Carême, on his death-bed, groaned over this heresy: and among his last words he said, "Why should the Marquis de Cussy wage war on soup? I cannot understand a dinner without it. I hold soup to be the wellbeloved of the stomach." What the Marquis de Cussy contended for was little more than this: that it is folly to load the stomach at the beginning of a long banquet with an elaborate essence-let the soup be light in quality, and let a few spoonfuls suffice. People often sit down to a late dinner faint and irritable; and those who have observed how quickly a little liquid nourishment acts as a restorative will never consent to dispense with soup as the best of all preliminaries at dinner. It is quite true, however, that to serve such a purpose we do not require much weight of matter; and the plain rule to follow is: For a great dinner the soups should be as light as possible-just enough to give a fillip; for a little dinner, with one or two dishes, they may be as rich and satisfying as you please. De Cussy is quite in accord here with Thomas Walker (of the Original), who maintained that if he gave turtle soup Soup to his guests they would want little else-whitebait and a grouse.
It has been reckoned that there are about five hundred kinds of soup; but this number is reached by giving the dignity of a separate receipt to every little variation. Thus there are a dozen sorts of Italian paste-vermicelli, macaroni, nouilles, lasagnes, and the rest. Each of these put into a clear gravy gives rise to a different soup. If we put into the very same fluid sago or tapioca, bread or rice or barley, a purée of potatoes or peas, carrots or turnips, tomatos or Jerusalem artichokes-we are supposed instantly to create a new soup. It would be a waste of time to attempt to enumerate all the possible combinations of solids and liquids that may be called soup. The solids are innumerable: the liquids are reducible to six-water, milk, wine, and the juices of beef, veal, and fowl. The cook finds the first three of these made to his hand; and his chief business as a soupmaker is to produce the most nutritive and tasteful broths from the viands furnished by the ox, by his nephew the calf, and by poultry. He has also other animals at command-such as mutton, game, and fish; but his grand resources for the stockpot are beef, veal, and fowl. From these he produces four different broths-two simple and two double-which are the foundations of nearly all the soups that can be imagined: Beef broth or bouillon; 2. Double broth or consommé ; 3. Veal stock or gravy (in French blonde de veau-another double broth); and 4. Fowl broth which is simple. 1.
This looks plain enough, and so it is; but the reader who will compare the cookery books will soon find himself lost in a confusion of receipts with a puzzling variety of names for the foundation-broths or gravies. It is because cookery, though a science, is not and cannot be an exact science; while at the same time the professors of cookery propound their receipts as if it were exact. They give a receipt with so much particularity that they have to Soup give another and another to cover a different set of particulars not included in the first. I might quote receipts furnished by the great masters-Beauvilliers, Carême, Dubois, Gouffé-from which a logician could easily prove, setting one against another, that there is no distinction between beef broth and consommé, broth and double broth; and even that veal stock and fowl broth are in substance (though not in process of cooking) the same thing. Take Gouffé, for example, who is the greatest living authority, and rarely makes a mistake. According to him the animal ingredients of the best veal stock are: 4 lbs. of veal, 2 lbs. of gravy beef, 2 hens, and 5½ quarts of beef broth, which ought to represent 7 or 8 lbs. of beef; and those of the best fowl broth are 6 lbs. of veal, 2 hens, and 5 quarts of similar beef broth. Compare the two. There is more veal in the fowl broth than in the veal stock; and the name of veal is given to that which contains least of it for this only reason that before it is set to simmer in the five quarts of beef broth, it is first reduced to a glaze with an extra pint of that broth. Further, taking liquid and solid together, there is in the veal stock more of beef than anything else-not far from ten ponnds; and in the fowl broth it is the same, though in less degree.
There is a remarkable difference of opinion as to the quantity of cold water to be added to beef and beef-bone in order to make broth or bouillon. A pound of water is exactly a pint; and whereas some authorities (Liebig, Dubois and Bernard the latest) declare that a good broth requires equal quantities of solid and liquid-a pound of the one to a pint of the other-the most recent authority of all, and a very great one too (Jules Gouffé), recommends in one receipt 22 pints, in another 34, in a third no less than 4, pints or pounds of water to the pound of beef. Here is an immense range; and between these extremes there is endless variety of opinion. The difference is incalculable between a broth made by adding a pint of water, and one Soup made by adding four pints, to every pound of beef. And observe that the difference goes further than the simple broth or bouillon; it affects the character of the double or consumed broth which ensues. The first point of distinction between broth and double broth is simply in strength -the liquid used for the first being cold water, the liquid used for the second being the resultant broth of the first. But it can easily be understood that simple broth or bouillon made from equal quantities of beef and water is stronger and better than double broth or consommé which has been made from bouillon that has been diluted with four times its weight of water. All this shows the danger of being over precise. A good deal must be left to the judgment of the cook, who has to take into account the result which he or she desires to obtain. A middle rule was laid down by the French chemist Parmentier in the last century: let the water be double the meat-a quart for every pound. This is the ordinary practice of French kitchens. If the bouillon is wanted very light, redouble the water; if strong, reduce it.
Another detail, and one not less important. The difference between bouillon and consommé, broth and double broth, is not merely in strength-it is also in character. The bouillon is a beef broth; the consommé is a beef broth which has been doubled with veal and fowl-the former to give it gelatine, the latter to give it flavour. But read the receipts for making up the stockpot or pot-au-feu, and for producing its broth or bouillon. In all of them it is stated that while beef is the essential consideration, we are free to add to it whatever else we have at command; veal, calves' feet, the remains of fowl, a trussed fowl if we want one for table, a leg of mutton, any trimmings of meat, pigskin, a ham-bone, or even a whole ham if that should be in the way; and some of the great cooks (like Dubois and Bernard) insist that the grand bouillon, to be properly made, must never be com- Soup posed of beef alone: it must be composed of beef, veal, and fowl, the constituents of consommé, in the proportion of 6 lbs. of beef to 2 of veal and 1 of fowl. Now see what this means.
If Gouffé, though he heartily approves of any good addition to the stockpot, allows you to make bouillon of beef and beef-bone alone, concocted in four times its weight of water; if his consommé is made by another concoction of the broth thus obtained with a trio of beef, veal, and fowl; and if, on the other hand, Dubois and Bernard insist that bouillon is in the first instance to be made from a trio of beef, veal, and fowl dissolved in no more than their own weight of water-indeed, rather less; *-all this surely means that the first broth of Dubois and Bernard ought to be as good as the second or double broth of Gouffé, and is obtained by a much simpler process. The consommé or double broth, as distinguished from plain broth or bouillon, may thus be nothing but a grand name, meaning no more than the celebrated phrase of Mr. Squeers' - " Here's richness, boys!" The simple bouillon of one kitchen is often richer and better than the most elaborate soup of another. It is a curious proof of the folly of laying down tight rules, that often in the French books one stumbles upon the statement-"Notez qu'on ne peut espérer faire un bon bouillon que dans une marmite de terre; " and English housewives will account for their bad soup by saying, "We cannot have the pot-au-feu as in France because our pots are metal." The one advantage-a great one, no doubt -of the French earthen pot is, that earthenware is a bad conductor of heat-slow to heat and slow to lose heat. The * As it may seem extravagant to prescribe rather less than pound for pound, it is right to give their exact quantities for bouillon. "Proportions approximatives: 14 kil. de bœuf, 5 kil. de veau, 2 poules ou l'équivalent de parures, 30 litres d'eau." This, reduced to English measure, means as nearly as possible 46 lbs. of meat to 43 lbs. or pints of water.
Soup secret of making soup is to begin with cold water, to bring it slowly to the boiling-point, a mere ripple on the surface, to let it simmer gently and continuously for hours-never boiling up and never ceasing to simmer. On these three points-the gradual production of the heat, the moderation of the boiling, and keeping it up to the end-the flavour and the clarification of the broth largely depend; and it is easy to manage this in an earthen vessel. But it is just as possible with an iron or copper stockpot. It may not be so easy upon an open fire, but there is no difficulty whatever on the closed ranges which are now so common. can regulate the heat perfectly by choosing any position for the stockpot, from the corner of the stove to the centre. We There is another needless direction. Soup should never be greasy. Every particle of fat should be removed. It is tedious to do so, however, by the ordinary process of skimming; and so we are sometimes advised to make the broth beforehand, and to make a supply for two days. When the broth cools the fat will cake on the surface, and may then be easily removed. The advice is good up to a certain point. It saves labour to make a good supply of broth at a time: it loses nothing in two days, even in hot weather, if kept in clean fresh vessels. But there is a simple mechanical contrivance to get rid of grease which ought for ever henceforth to render the little eyes which appear on the surface of soup an impossibility. All the fat rises to the top of the stockpot; if there is a tap at the bottom of it the broth will flow out without a particle of grease.
Common sense will tell the cook to beware of salt.
It is well to put it into the stockpot from the beginning, because it helps to make the scum rise; but what is barely enough for a full stockpot may be a great deal too much when the liquid boils down to half. The liquid flies off in steam, but the salt remains.
The advantage of sugar is not so well known. It is Soup 44 I as much for the saccharine matter which they contain as for anything else that onions, carrots, and turnips are so necessary to the stockpot. A little pinch of sugar at table is often a wonderful improvement to a tasteless soup. But a soup too sweet is sickly; and the cook must be very careful in applying it to the stockpot. She must take into account not only the sweetness of the vegetables in the pot, but also the sweetness of the caramel with which she will probably have to give the finishing touch of colour to the soup before sending it to table. 1. Beef Broth, Bouillon, or Stock. - Bone the beef first and what other meat is to be used along with it. Beef alone is enough, but almost any other meat may be added, or trimmings or remains. Put the bones in first, then the meat, then twice as much water as bone and meat combined-a quart to a pound. Add a little salt, bring it slowly to the boiling-point, and skim it. When skimmed enough, add the vegetables-carrots, turnips, parsnips, celery, onions, leeks, a faggot of parsley, two or three cloves, twice as many peppercorns, and a scrape or two of nutmeg. After simmering for five hours it ought to be ready. Strain it, clear away the fat, adjust the salt, colour it if need be with caramel, and with the addition of toasted sippets it is quite fit for table. Without the final salt, the caramel and the sippets, it can be put aside as stock for the preparation of other soups and for sauces. 2. Double Broth or Consommé. -The receipt for this depends a good deal on what beef broth the first consists of. It may have been made with much or with little water; it may be composed of beef alone, or of a little beef heightened with veal, fowl, mutton, ham, and all that is meant by "pot luck." The great thing now is to produce a good stock, strong with beef; smooth and gelatinous with veal, with calves' feet, or with pigskin; and perfumed with fowl or wild rabbits. It is impossible to state the exact propor- Soup tions, and chiefly because broth No. 1 is uncertain it is "pot luck." Some cooks add no beef whatever, calculating that when the bouillon or beef broth which liquefies the consommé is further reduced by five hours' boiling, there is quite enough beef in it already. If the first beef broth has a good supply of beef in it, they are quite right in adding none to the second. Assuming that when boiled down it will be sufficiently strong in beef, the next object is to make it smooth upon the tongue and sapid. To this end add a knuckle of veal and a fowl, from which the fillets have been removed. Instead of the veal calf's feet will do, or some pigskin-both rich in gelatine, and giving the broth a velvety smoothness. Instead of the fowl a wild rabbit will suffice. Pour on this meat double the quantity of broth--that is, a quart for every pound. Bring it gradually to the boiling-point, and skim it. When the skimming is at an end, the usual order is to garnish it with carrots, onions, leeks, and a little mace; but this is because cooks so seldom know when they have enough of a good thing; they forget that the broth which goes into the pot is already charged with vegetables. Let the whole simmer for five hours, at the end of which time strain it, keep clear of the fat, look to the salt and the caramel; and there ought to be a fine soup ready for use. Some of the French cooks recommend that the veal, but more especially the fowl used as above, shall first be roasted, baked or brazed-partly for the sake of the colour so produced, partly for the flavour which it developes. This is too troublesome for every day, but it is worth while to take the trouble on special occasions. 3. Veal Stock, or Blonde de Veau. - This is, although not so called, another consommé or double broth, but prepared in a peculiar way. Butter a deep stewpan, and line the bottom of it half an inch thick with slices of onion. Upon this cushion put a slice of ham, quite free from fat, and a knuckle of veal which has been boned; put in Soup also the bone, with any fresh trimmings of poultry, or a whole fowl if there is one, and with nearly a pint of broth. Put it on the stove fire, and boil it briskly until it is well reduced. Then prick the veal with a sharp knife, to let the juices flow out, and turning it frequently to prevent burning, boil it slowly, very slowly, till the glaze darkens to a deep red. Next fill up the pan (a pint for a pound) with boiling beef broth (No. 1), or simply with boiling water if it is not wanted very strong, and let the pan remain off the fire for a few minutes, to detach and melt the glaze. Put it on the fire again, boil it, skim it-and if the pot has been filled with water, not with broth, garnish it with carrots, turnips, celery, a faggot of parsley, some peppercorns, a blade of mace, and perhaps a pinch of sugar. It should simmer on the angle of the stove for three or four hours; and when strained through a napkin and clarified, it should have a rich amber tint, as it is much used for colouring the clear soups and for finishing sauces. 4. Fowl Broth. - This broth, as now ordered to be made by some of the greatest authorities, differs in no essential from ordinary consommé or double broth. Consommé is, according to them, made of beef, veal, and fowl boiled in beef broth; consommé of fowl is made of fowl, veal, and beef boiled in broth; and we have already seen that blonde de veau is composed of the same materials-veal, fowl, and becf boiled in broth. This is mere thimble-rigging. The fact is, that there is no such broth as consommé of fowl distinct from ordinary consommé. A little more or a little less fowl cannot constitute a difference of kind; and the difference of name only perplexes cooks, who, if they work out a consommé in the proper way, are fairly entitled to some freedom in the choice of quantities. It is a farce to suppose that the addition of a second fowl to a consommé alters its character, and entitles it to a new name; for the name of consommé has a special meaning, which does not apply to the following receipts.
Soup Let one or more fowls be half-roasted before a brisk fire. Then put them in the pot with a pintor a pint and a half of water for every pound. When the pot boils, skim it, add vegetables and seasoning-carrot, onion, leek, celery, turnip, clove, salt, pepper and let it simmer for three hours, at the end of which time strain the broth through a napkin, and remove the fat..
White Fowl Broth, for use in white soups and sauces, is made in the same way, but without the roasting.
The following is an alphabetical list of the soups described in this volume :- Asparagus.
Barley broth.
Barley cream.
Bisque.
Blonde de Veau.
Bonne Femme.
Bouillabaisse.
Broth.
Brunoise.
Cabbage.
Haricot Red.
Haricot White.
Hotch Potch.
Julienne.
Leek and potato.
Leek.
Lentil.
Macaroni.
Mutton.
Carrot.
Celery.
Chantilly.
Palestine.
Paysanne.
Pea.
Potato Chestnut.
Pot-au-feu.
Chicken.
Queen's Chicken..
Pumpkin.
Restaurant.
Chiffonnade.
St. Germain.
Cock-a-leekie.
Scotch Broth..
Colbert.
Sheep's head.
Condé.
Consommé.
Crayfish.
Crécy.
Cresses.
Croûte-au-pot.
Esau's.
Fish broth.
Girasol.
Hare.
Soup in general..
Spring.
Stock.
Tomato.
Turtle.
Mock Turtle.
Veal...
Vegetable Marrow..
Vermicelli.
Spanish Sance Soy-a sort of ketchup made from the Soy bean (Soja hispida), a native of China, Japan, and the Moluccas. We have got a way of calling it Indian Soy, because it comes to us from India; but all the best is made in Japan and China by a process which is perfectly well understood. It is not quite clear, however, why, since we might import though we cannot grow the Soy bean, which is like a kidney bean, we cannot reproduce the sauce for ourselves; and this mystery has led to a widespread superstition that the Soy must be made from some of the horrors with which the Chinese at least are known to indulge their appetites. The bean suggests a black beetle ; and there are numbers of people who seriously believe that from black beetles the Soy is made. Another point is not clear. From every account of the process of making Soy we should expect a sauce as salt as Anchovy sauce. It is said to be used like salt at Oriental tables. But the Soy with which we are familiar in Europe is not only as black as treacle, but also as sweet.
SPANISH SAUCE has for more than a century been the chief sauce in Europe. The name is rather absurd, and now means no more than Brown Sauce of the finest quality. For centuries there were Spanish sauces of one kind or another adopted in France, but it was a new thing for the French in the last century to give the name of the Spaniard to their most elaborate gravy. The great cooking authority in the middle of last century, when Louis XV. reigned in all his glory, was Menon; and his books clearly show what the sauce was intended to be. Its grand peculiarity was to have a double supply of ham, which predominated over every other ingredient. These were days when it was supposed that no sauce could be made good without ham. In Menon's receipts for family use nearly all the sauces have for their foundation one slice of ham and one slice of veal boiled down in beef broth. The Spanish sauce Spinach had two slices of ham; and grew into such favour that it seemed to eclipse all the other brown sauces, and to be worthy of the most lavish adornment. In later days, when this system of adornment was at its height, one of the receipts for it already quoted begins with the direction, "Take twelve ducks, a ham, two bottles of old Madeira, and six pounds of fine truffles." While the ham was the chief thing in the sauce, there was a reason for calling it Spanish, which will be found in the general article on Sauces. But gradually the influence of the ham has been diminishing. The share of it allowed to Spanish sauce is allowed to other sauces, and the quantity has been so much reduced in proportion to beef and veal, that it is doubtful whether it has any effect worth aiming at. Spanish sauce has no longer a Spanish characteristic-save its brownness; and at last a great cook (Gouffé) has been bold enough to strike the ham wholly out of the sauce, which is in his receipt but a good gravy of beef and veal finished with roux.
Follow the receipt (pp. 225, 226) for making beef or veal gravy, but use beef and veal together in the proportion of one to three, and moisten them with broth instead of water, in both the small quantity required for producing the glaze in the first part of the process, and the larger quantity for simmering in the second. When the juice is fairly extracted from the meat, it is to be strained; it is to be thickened with roux ; it is to be raised to boiling point and reduced to a cullis by simmering on the angle of the stove; it is to be skimmed well and freed from grease; and it is last of all to be strained again through a tammy. betstimobsi0 SPINACH requires to be well washed and picked. If young and tender, it requires but little water to boil itlittle more than the moisture which adheres to it after washing. If ripe and strong of leaf, more water is needed -but still not much. The water should be boiling, some Spitchcock salt should be added, and in ten minutes for young, fifteen for full-grown spinach, it is cooked enough. After this the spinach is drained in a colander, and the water squeezed out. It is then either chopped finely, or the better to get rid of stalks and fibres-passed through a sieve; it is put upon the fire with butter, pepper, salt again, and some nutmeg; when it has absorbed the butter, it is dredged with flour; it is stirred for a little on the fire to cook the flour, and then at the last moment there is another piece of butter melted into it to give it the finishing touch. This is what the French regard as the English way of preparing spinach, and they call it Épinards à l'Anglaise. Spinach with Gravy (Épinards au jus.) This is what the French regard as peculiarly their own method. It is the same as the foregoing, only that when dredged with flour it is at the same time moistened with some good gravy. Garnish with fried crusts.
Spinach with Cream-what paper-makers might call cream-laid. Use cream, or very good milk, instead of the gravy of the last receipt : otherwise there is no difference. Spinach and Potatoes make a good combination. Take a pound of each and make a purée of them, half and half, mix them thoroughly, season them with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, add according to taste either gravy or cream, and finish them with three or four ounces of fresh butter. There is in this case to be no flour, the place of which is more than supplied by the potatoes.
SPITCHCOCK-Sometimes Spatchcock. The former is a name given to a broiled eel, the latter to a broiled chicken; but it is ludicrous to see how the dictionary-makers flounder over the etymology. The first word comes from spit and cock, they say, or else from spit and cook; the second comes from despatch and cock-a quick way of despatching a cock! The first syllable is in both words at root the same Sprats -namely, spit-which survives with a diversity of meaning in spud, and spade, and so accounts for the alteration of vowel. In Somersetshire to spit is to dig-to use the spade; and in Northamptonshire a spitch is a spadeful. But what is the last syllable? Anybody will find it out who considers the meaning of the word. A spitchcock or a spatchcock is something-be it eel or chicken-spread out upon small spits or skewers, as kidneys are en brochette, for the purpose of being broiled. In modern, though not classical English, we should say that they are spitted. Our ancestors, however, had not this past participle; for having the verb to spit in another sense, they had not yet invented the culinary verb to spit. They fell back upon a circumlocution which still survives in the Dutch idiom. To spit or put on a spit is in Dutch aan een spit steken; and spitted is spit gesteken. The old English parallel must have been to stick on a spit, and to be spitstucken or spitstocken. In process of time the final syllable dropped off, and eels and chickens were said to be broiled, spitstuck or spitstock. Corrupt the 't of the second syllable into c, which is very frequent, and there is spitscock or spitchcock all alive.
SPRATS and their euthanasia. The following receipt for turning sprats into roses-the sublime of cookeryis borrowed from a private letter: - "Some time since C- went to visit a friend in the country who had most marvellous roses in full bloom. Every one exclaimed at their beauty, and asked 'How can you get such?' The gentleman who owned them was a man of few words, and only said-' Sprats.' It seems that he manured them with loads of stinking-sprats. Not long afterwards a man called at my house with sprats. Are they stinking?' said I, eagerly. 'No,' said the man-'quite fresh.' 'Then bring me the first stinking ones you have.' In a few days he came with a heavy heart, and offered me a large quantity Strawberries which had turned putrid on his hands. The result was that on a very small bush I had thirty-six blossoms all at once of magnificent Marshal Niels."