Bouillon
6 pounds round of beef finely chopped 3 quarts cold water 1 pound bones, cracked 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon finely chopped red or green pepper 1 small onion stuck with cloves + cup celery 1/4 cup carrot 6 peppercorns 2 cloves 1 cup sherry 2 tablespoons butter Cover meat and bones with cold water; simmer four hours. Sauté vegetables in butter; add to stock with seasonings. Cook one hour longer, strain, cool, remove fat, and clear. Serve.
A classic clear beef bouillon built on a very high ratio of meat to water — the finely chopped round is doing the work of both flavour and body. The listed quantities are generous by modern standards and the instructions omit two steps a cook of 1907 would have taken for granted.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the meat is in the cold water, bring it up slowly and hold it at a bare tremble, around 180F, for the whole four hours. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and drives albumin through the liquid, and no amount of clarifying afterwards will give you a bright bouillon.
- "Clear" means clarifyThe original assumes you know the raft: whisk two lightly beaten egg whites (with the crushed shells, if you like) into the cold, degreased stock, bring it slowly to a simmer without stirring once it clouds, let the raft set for 10–15 minutes, then ladle through a cloth-lined sieve. Skipping this step gives good broth but not bouillon.
- "+ cup celery"A printing artefact — the fraction has dropped out. Half a cup of chopped celery balances the quarter cup of carrot sensibly; treat the amount as the cook's discretion rather than a fixed measure.
- Round of beef, finely choppedAsk for bottom or top round coarsely ground, or chop it yourself; ground chuck is too fatty for a clear soup. The pound of cracked bones is worth insisting on — a butcher will saw beef shin or knuckle open on request, and the marrow and collagen are where the mouthfeel comes from.
- When to add the sherryThe recipe never says. Add it after straining and degreasing, off the heat or with only a brief warming, so the aroma survives. Sherry stirred in at the start of a four-hour simmer will lose most of its character.
- SaltTwo teaspoons for three quarts is low by modern standards, and the liquid reduces over five hours. Salt to taste after clarifying, not before.
- Cool it safelyCooling five hours of stock in the pot on the counter is how old kitchens did it and how modern ones grow bacteria. Strain into a shallow pan, chill quickly, and lift the set fat off the top the next day.
- YieldExpect a little over two quarts after reduction and straining — six to eight cups as a first course, fewer if you reduce further for a stronger cup.
Bouillon in an American cookbook of this vintage means something narrower than "broth": a clarified beef essence, served in handled cups rather than soup plates, and drunk as much for supposed restorative value as for flavour. Invalid cookery and the temperance-era fashion for a hot cup at receptions and afternoon calls kept it in constant demand, which is also why bouillon cubes and beef extracts were such commercial successes in the same decades. This version's six pounds of meat to three quarts of water shows what the homemade article cost in comparison — the meat is sacrificed entirely, since round simmered four hours and then strained out has nothing left to give. That it appears in a book published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, is a reminder of how confectioners and food firms of the period issued general cookbooks with their products woven in, the recipes for soups and roasts serving as respectable company for the chocolate chapters.