Meat Stock
Instruct the butcher to deliver all bones and trimmings removed from roasts; and save all meats and gravies left over from previous meals. By so doing soup may be at once economical and good. To every pound of meat and bone use one quart of cold water. Cut the meat into pieces and ask the butcher to crush the large bones, so that the gelatine and fat may be fully extracted. Put all in a covered kettle on the back of the stove. When the water becomes red bring the kettle forward and let it heat slowly. Keep the water below the boiling point for three or four hours. If more water is needed, add boiling water. It is not necessary to remove the scum that rises.
Stock should be prepared at least one day before it is to be used, so that the fat on the top may harden and be removed. Do not remove the fat until it is necessary, however, as it aids in keeping the stock sweet. 1 carrot 1 onion 1 stalk celery 2 turnips 2 tomatoes
A working stockpot recipe from the era of the coal range, where a kettle could sit at the cool back of the stovetop all afternoon. Everything here still works on a modern burner, with two adjustments: how you hold the temperature, and how you cool it.
- Never let it boilThe whole method hinges on keeping the water below boiling for the full three or four hours. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and breaks up albumin, which turns the stock cloudy and greasy; a bare shiver at the surface, around 180-190F, keeps it clear. On a gas or electric range this usually means the lowest setting with the lid ajar.
- "The back of the stove"On a wood or coal range the back was the coolest zone, used for long gentle extraction. Modern equivalent: lowest burner setting, or a 200-225F oven with the lid on, or a slow cooker on low.
- "When the water becomes red"Not a chemical reaction but a visual cue. Cold water draws blood and soluble protein out of the bones and meat; once the water has tinted, extraction has begun and the pot can be brought forward to heat.
- ProportionsOne quart of water per pound of meat and bone is still the standard ratio for a light stock.
- The vegetablesThe list at the end has no instructions attached. Add them for only the last hour; carrot, onion, celery, turnip and tomato all give up their flavour quickly and turn muddy and sulphurous over four hours. Peel the turnips and halve the tomatoes.
- Crushed bonesAsk for the bones sawn or cracked rather than whole. Collagen in bone and connective tissue is where the gelatine comes from, and an intact femur gives up very little. A butcher counter will still do this on request.
- Leftover graviesSave pan juices and roast trimmings by all means, but keep out flour-thickened gravy. Starch clouds the stock, scorches on the bottom of the pot, and sours faster than clear liquid.
- Cooling and the fat capThe advice to leave the fat on as a seal was sound in a cold larder; it is not a substitute for refrigeration. Cool the pot quickly, in a sink of iced water or divided into shallow pans, then refrigerate. The fat still lifts off as a hard disc the next day. Use within four days or freeze.
- SkimmingThe instruction not to remove the scum may reflect a stock that is never boiled, so the scum is less likely to be dispersed through the liquid. If you want a consommé-clear result, skim the grey foam in the first half hour anyway.
Meat stock commonly opens the soup chapter in household cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its opening lines are as much household management as cookery: instruct the butcher, save the trimmings, waste nothing. In a period when a joint of meat was the centre of the week's eating and refrigeration meant an icebox, the stockpot was the mechanism by which bones, gravy and Sunday's scraps became Tuesday's dinner. The technique itself is straight out of the French professional kitchen, where stock is drawn from cold water at a bare simmer. The vegetables listed as a bare afterthought are what French cookery had long since established as mirepoix, with the tomato and turnip marking this as an English-American reading of the idea rather than a strictly French one.