Stock Soups
Skill, patience and good materials are necessary for the making of good soup. In order to draw out and dissolve the nutritive and flavoring qualities of meat, cut the meat into small pieces, cover with cold water, and let stand at least an hour, then heat very gradually.
For a rich stock allow one pint of water to each pound of meat and bone, having only one quarter pound bone and three quarters meat. One kind of meat may be used, or several kinds. If soup is made from remnants of cold meat, be sure to add a small amount of fresh meat to give added flavor. Remember that if the contents of the soup kettle are allowed to boil for any length of time, it will be almost impossible to secure a clear soup from the stock. How to clear Soup Stock Allow the white and shell of one egg for two quarts of strained stock. Beat the white, add crushed shell and the cold stock, pour into kettle, set over the fire, and stir constantly until the boiling point is reached; boil three minutes without stirring, then simmer for ten minutes, strain through sieve, then through a cheese cloth; reheat and serve. If these directions are followed, an absolutely clear soup will be the result.
To keep Soup Stock When the stock is ready to strain, strain into several receptacles; a coating of fat will form on the top, which serves to keep out the air. This fat must be removed before clearing the stock. Stock with a coating of fat will keep a week in summer and several weeks in winter. If the weather is very warm, scald the stock, then cool quickly. 1 can of asparagus or 1 bunch of asparagus 4 cups cold water 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons flour
This is a method page rather than a single dish: general stock technique, egg-white clarification, and period storage advice. Two of the three parts translate directly to a modern kitchen; the third does not.
- The hinge: never let it boilA rolling boil emulsifies fat and breaks up albumin and connective tissue into a permanent haze, which is exactly what the text warns against. Hold the pot at a bare tremble — around 180-190F, with only occasional bubbles breaking the surface — for the whole extraction.
- The cold-water soakThe hour of standing in cold water before heating is real technique, not superstition. Soluble proteins and flavour compounds dissolve into cold water and are carried out as it warms; a hot start coagulates protein at the surface straight away, which tends to extract less and cloud the liquid.
- The ratio, in modern termsOne pint of water per pound of meat and bone is 2 cups per pound, three parts meat to one part bone. That is a very meat-heavy stock by current habits — closer to a broth or consommé base than to the mostly-bone stock now sold as bone broth.
- Clarification arithmeticOne egg white plus its crushed shell per 2 quarts of stock. The stock must be cold when the egg goes in, or the white sets in threads instead of forming a raft. The shell adds calcium carbonate and a rough surface for particles to cling to; it is optional but harmless.
- After the raft sets, stop stirringStir only until boiling point, then leave it alone for the three minutes and the ten-minute simmer. Breaking the raft releases everything it has collected back into the liquid. Ladle the stock out from under the raft rather than pouring the pot through the sieve.
- Skim and salt lateThe page gives no instruction on either, but skim the grey scum off during the first half hour, and season at the end, after any reduction, since a stock destined for sauces can turn harsh if salted early.
- Ignore the keeping instructionsA cap of fat over stock held at room temperature creates an oxygen-poor layer — the conditions in which Clostridium botulinum can grow in a low-acid liquid, and the toxin gives no warning by smell or taste. "A week in summer" was written for a cellar and an icebox and is not safe advice now. Chill stock quickly and refrigerate it 3-4 days, or freeze it.
- The stray ingredient listThe asparagus, water, butter and flour at the end belong to the recipe that follows in the book, not to the stock. They are the makings of a cream of asparagus soup built on this stock.
Lowney's Cook Book was issued in the early 1900s by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other manufacturer cookbooks of its day it surrounded its advertising recipes with conventional domestic instruction. The insistence on "absolutely clear soup" belongs to a period when a transparent consommé was widely taken as proof of a competent kitchen: French professional practice, filtered through American household manuals, encouraged clarity as a mark of care, and cloudy soup read as carelessness. The storage note is the more revealing paragraph. Mechanical refrigeration was not yet in ordinary homes, and sealing a crock of stock under its own fat — the same logic as potted meat and confit — was a common way to buy a few days in summer or longer in a cold larder. It is a glimpse of a kitchen where the weather, not a thermostat, set the limits of what could be kept.