Stock from Bones
INGREDIENTS for 3 quarts of stock. -4 lbs. of bones, 2 carrots, 2 onions, a few cloves, a bunch of herbs, pepper and salt. AVERAGE COST, 9d.
Chop the bones and put them, with the vegetables, seasoning ing and and herbs, in an airtight vessel, and boil for 8 hours; then strain, and when cold remove the fat. This forms a useful and cheap stock for soups and sauces.
TIME.-8 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Stock (for all kinds of Soups; Rich
A frugal bone stock, and the method is sound; only the vessel and the timing need translating into modern terms.
- "Airtight vessel"Beeton means a stockpot with a close-fitting lid, or a screw-topped digester of the sort Victorian kitchens used to hold in the steam. Never seal a pot so that steam cannot escape at all. A heavy pan with the lid resting on, or an oven-going casserole, gives the same slow, barely-moving extraction.
- "Boil for 8 hours"Read this as a bare simmer with the surface just trembling. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat back into the liquid and turns the stock cloudy and greasy; eight hours at a whisper draws out the gelatine and leaves it clear. A pressure cooker reaches much the same point in about 2 hours.
- The bonesFour pounds of bones, chopped or sawn so the marrow and collagen are exposed. Beeton does not say what kind; beef or veal are the usual assumption. Ask a butcher to cut them; a cleaver on a home board is a poor bargain. Browning bones and vegetables in a hot oven first gives a darker stock, but that is a departure from this recipe, which browns nothing.
- QuantitiesCover the bones and vegetables by two to three inches of cold water, roughly 4 to 5 quarts, to finish with the 3 quarts Beeton promises. Top up with hot water if the level drops below the bones during the long cooking.
- Seasoning"A few cloves" means three or four, not a spoonful; they dominate quickly. The bunch of herbs is unspecified; parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf are the usual reading. The recipe calls for salt, but salting lightly is safer given the stock will be reduced later in soups and sauces.
- Skim, then strainTake off the grey scum that rises in the first half hour or it will cloud the finished stock. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth rather than a colander.
- Cooling and keeping"When cold remove the fat" assumes a cold larder. Cool the strained stock quickly, in a shallow pan or with the pot set in iced water, then refrigerate; lift the set fat off the next day. Keeps 3 to 4 days chilled, or freeze in measured portions.
- Cost and yieldThe 9d. is pre-decimal currency and marks this as a deliberately cheap preparation. Three quarts gives a working base for more than one soup or sauce.
Bone stock sits at the thrifty end of Victorian cookery: bones went back into the pot, and what came out was the foundation of soups and sauces. Beeton lists several stocks by grade -- rich, medium, economical -- and this one is among the plainest. The sealed vessel and the very long cooking reflect the influence of the digester, a lidded iron pot descended from Denis Papin's seventeenth-century steam digester, which nineteenth-century writers recommended for extracting gelatine from bones with the smallest possible outlay of fuel. Leaving the fat to set and lifting it off in a cake was economy rather than fastidiousness.