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Bouillon (Teaspoons beef extract)
2 teaspoons beef extract 1/2 teaspoon onion juice Salt and pepper Pinch of mace 1 quart water Heat the water; add the extract and seasonings. Serve in bouillon cups, with salted wafers.
A one-minute drink built from a jar of concentrated beef extract, meant as the light first course of a luncheon. The whole thing hinges on not boiling it.
- Beef extractThis means a dark, sticky, salty paste of the Bovril or Liebig type, not a bouillon cube and not liquid "beef broth concentrate" in a tub. Two teaspoons to a quart is a deliberately thin, clear infusion; modern pastes are heavily salted, so taste before adding any of the salt called for.
- Do not boilModern practice is to avoid boiling extract, which is said to flatten its aroma; the recipe itself says only to heat the water. Heat the water to just under a simmer, stir the extract in until dissolved, and serve.
- Onion juiceGrate onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth; a small onion will give more than the half teaspoon needed. Onion powder is not a good substitute here, as it clouds the cup.
- MaceGround mace, the outer covering of nutmeg, was a standard savory spice in this period. A pinch is genuinely a pinch; more than about an eighth of a teaspoon in a quart will dominate.
- Fireless cookeryIf this comes from a fireless-cookery section, the point would be that no sustained heat is needed: water brought to temperature in a kettle and held in a fireless cooker or a warmed vacuum jug will stay at serving heat without cooking further.
- Yield and serviceA quart fills six bouillon cups of about five ounces. Bouillon cups are two-handled and may be drunk from or taken with a round bouillon spoon; a small handled coffee cup or a mug works. Salted wafers means thin unsweetened crackers.
- ClarityIf the finished cup looks murky, strain through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before serving. A clear amber cup was the whole ambition of this dish.
Concentrated beef extract was a nineteenth-century industrial product before it was a pantry staple: Justus von Liebig's meat extract, whose extraction process he published in 1847, was manufactured commercially from 1865 by the Liebig's Extract of Meat Company at Fray Bentos in Uruguay, where cattle were slaughtered for hides and the meat was largely waste, and was marketed as cheap nourishment for invalids and the poor. By 1900 it had migrated into the middle-class kitchen as a convenience. Clear bouillon served in small two-handled cups was standard as the opening of a luncheon or as late refreshment after cards, where a soup plate would have been too substantial.