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White Soup Stock
4 pounds knuckle of veal 1 onion Small bay leaf 2 teaspoons salt 6 peppercorns 1 stalk celery 8 cups water Wipe the meat and cut into small pieces. Have bone cracked and place this with the meat in the kettle; add seasoning and onion and celery cut into small pieces. Add water and allow to stand an hour. Boil slowly thirty minutes and place in cooker eight hours. Pour soup through several thicknesses of cheesecloth and it will be very clear. Use one radiator or cook a longer time.
A plain white stock built on veal knuckle, written for a fireless cooker — an insulated box in which food finished cooking on stored heat from preheated iron or soapstone discs called radiators. The method translates directly to a slow cooker or a low oven, with one important caveat about holding temperature.
- The hinge: keep it actually hotA fireless cooker's temperature falls steadily over eight hours, and stock held for that long in the 40-140F range is a textbook vehicle for Clostridium perfringens. Use a slow cooker on low or a covered pot in a 200-225F oven, where the liquid stays at or near a bare simmer the whole time.
- Knuckle of vealThe veal shank joint, valued for gelatin rather than flavour. Ask a butcher for cross-cut veal shank or veal knuckle bones and have them sawn; if veal is unavailable, beef shank plus a split calf's foot or a few pounds of chicken feet gives comparable body, though the stock will be darker.
- Why it is whiteNothing is browned and the liquid is never allowed to boil hard. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and drives fine particles into suspension, which is what clouds a stock. Skim the scum that rises during the first thirty minutes and keep the surface barely moving after that.
- The hour's standingThe cold soak before heating draws soluble protein out of the meat so it coagulates as scum at the top, where it can be lifted off. Do not skip it if you want the clarity the recipe promises.
- SaltTwo teaspoons in eight cups is light for drinking but correct for a stock that will be reduced or used as a base for sauces and cream soups. Season the finished dish, not the stock.
- "One radiator or cook a longer time"Fireless cookers took one or two heated discs depending on how much stored heat the food needed. It is an instruction about the appliance, not the food, and has no modern equivalent.
- Straining and storingSeveral layers of damp cheesecloth in a sieve, and let it drain rather than pressing the solids. Chill uncovered until the fat sets as a solid cap, then lift it off. Yield will be somewhat under the eight cups of water started with, depending on how much evaporates; a good veal stock will set to a firm jelly in the refrigerator.
- KeepingFour days refrigerated, or freeze in measured portions. Reboil any stock kept more than a couple of days before using it.
Fireless cookery had a vogue in American kitchens from the 1900s into the 1920s. The cooker was a lidded, heavily insulated box: food was brought to the boil on the range, then set inside with one or two preheated metal or soapstone radiators, and the retained heat finished the job while the stove — and the coal or wood it burned — went cold. Long, low-attention jobs like stock suited it perfectly, and the manufacturers' selling points were fuel economy and a kitchen that stayed cool in summer. White stock itself is much older and belongs to the French fonds blanc tradition, the neutral veal-and-aromatic base from which cream soups, velouté and white sauces were built; veal knuckle was the standard choice because its cartilage and marrow give gelatin without colour or strong flavour. The same principle of retained-heat cooking survives in the vacuum flask and, in spirit, in the electric slow cooker.