Soup Stock
In planning to keep soup stock on hand it is necessary to keep a careful eye on the left-overs from each meal and utilize every scrap. Good meats, when not otherwise needed-pieces from roast, chops, etc.-should be cut in small pieces, or, better yet, be put through the food chopper that it may yield the richer return. Bones from fresh or cooked meats should all be saved.
When a mixed stock is to be made, all kinds of meat may be used indiscriminately, the long cooking blending their flavors together; the one point to be noted is that such high-flavored meats as ham or bacon should not predominate. Bits of raw meat are very desirable and add greatly to the finished result. To each pound of meat and bone (not over 1/2 of the latter) add 1 quart of cold water and 1 teaspoonful of salt, heat slowly and boil very gently for at least three hours. Add I or 2 onions stuck with 6 cloves, a small bay leaf, 1 dozen peppercorns, a stalk of parsley, I or 2 stalks of celery and such cooked vegetables as are on hand and will harmonize with the general flavor, such as carrots, celery, a little parsnip or turnip; such green vegetables as peas or string beans are always in order. Let all simmer for another hour, then strain through a wet piece of cheese-cloth and set away over night; in the morning the fat is taken off carefully and the stock is quite ready for use.
A method rather than a fixed recipe: the ratio (1 lb meat and bone, no more than a third bone, to 1 quart cold water and 1 teaspoon salt) is the only fixed part, and everything else flexes with what is in the refrigerator.
- Start cold, never boil hardThe instruction to heat slowly and keep the pot at a very gentle boil is the hinge of the whole thing. Cold water draws soluble protein out before it sets, and a rolling boil emulsifies fat and suspended solids into the liquid, giving a cloudy stock that no amount of straining will clear. Hold it at a bare shiver, with the surface barely moving.
- "Boil very gently" means simmerPeriod cookbooks used "boil" loosely. Aim for 185-200F, and skim the grey scum that rises in the first twenty minutes before the aromatics go in.
- Bone proportion"Not over 1/2 of the latter" means bone should be no more than half the combined pound of meat and bone. Modern stock-making leans harder on bone for body, so more bone than this is not a fault, only a different result.
- Food chopperA hand-cranked mincer clamped to the table. A coarse grind in a food processor does the same job; the point is surface area, which speeds extraction from already-cooked scraps that have little left to give.
- Ham and baconThe warning still holds. Cured pork carries salt and smoke (and, in modern products, curing salts), and a large proportion will dominate a mixed stock; the recipe's own point is that it should not predominate, not that it must be excluded.
- Vegetables go in lastThe recipe gives them only the final hour. The usual reasoning is that onion and celery can turn sulphurous and carrot flatly sweet over long cooking, and that soft leftovers such as parsnip or turnip may cloud the stock if cooked to collapse.
- CoolingDo not set the pot away overnight at room temperature as written. A large volume of warm stock stays in the bacterial growth range for hours; cool it fast in a sink of ice water, then refrigerate uncovered until the fat sets hard enough to lift off in a disc.
- Yield and keepingYield will be somewhat less than the water put in, depending on how hard it simmers. Refrigerated it holds three or four days; frozen in pint containers, several months.
Stock-keeping of this kind belongs to a kitchen where nothing left the house as waste. This entry is less a recipe than a standing household discipline: the cook is told to keep "a careful eye on the left-overs from each meal," because the stockpot was the mechanism by which chop bones, roast trimmings and yesterday's carrots were converted back into dinner. The framework is French in origin, the pot-au-feu and the classic bouillon filtered into English and American manuals through the nineteenth century, but the technique described here is much older than any cuisine: cold-water start, long slow extraction, aromatics late, strain, chill, lift the fat.