Brown Stock
3 pounds meat. 3 pepper corns. 1 bay leaf. 1 sprig parsley. 1 teaspoon salt. 2 quarts cold water. 3 cloves. 1 teaspoon thyme. 1 pt. chopped vegetables. Cut meat in small pieces. Let stand in the cold water one hour, in the kettle ready for cooking. Take out a few pieces of the meat, put on spider with melted butter or fat from meat and let brown. Add to the above and let simmer four hours. Add seasonings and vegetables and let simmer another hour. When cold the grease will rise to the surface; take off when ready for use. The stock forms a jelly-like substance.
A plain foundation stock of the type every early-20th-century soup chapter opened with. The method is sound; the vocabulary and a few habits need translating.
- What "meat" meansMost likely a cheap gelatinous beef cut such as shin, shank or neck, bone included, though the recipe does not say so; cut small, as directed. Lean muscle alone gives thin stock; the connective tissue is what produces the jelly the recipe promises.
- SpiderA spider is a cast-iron frying pan, originally footed for hearth cooking. Any heavy skillet does the job.
- Brown more than "a few pieces"The recipe browns only some of the meat; whatever the reason, browning at least half the meat and the bones hard, then deglazing the pan with a little water and adding that liquid too, is what separates brown stock from a grey one.
- The hinge: never let it boilBring it slowly to a bare shiver and hold it there for the full five hours. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and drives protein scum back into the liquid, giving cloudy stock that will not set. Skim the grey foam off during the first half hour.
- A pint of chopped vegetablesAbout two cups: onion, carrot and celery, the usual mirepoix mix (classically about half onion to a quarter each carrot and celery). Adding them only in the final hour is worth keeping either way, since vegetables cooked five hours turn the stock sweet and muddy.
- Strain itThe recipe never says so. Pour through a fine sieve or damp cloth before cooling, and do not press the solids or you will push sediment through.
- Cooling"When cold the grease will rise" assumed a cold larder. Cool the pot quickly in a sink of iced water, then refrigerate; stock left standing warm overnight is a reliable way to spoil five hours of work. The fat cap lifts off in one disc the next day.
- Yield and keepingTwo quarts of water reduces to roughly a quart of finished stock. It keeps three or four days refrigerated under its fat, or several months frozen; freeze some in ice-cube trays for deglazing.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia households in the years around the First World War and was known for wartime economy cookery. Soup chapters of this kind follow the French professional pattern that American domestic-science writers had adopted: a white stock from unbrowned meat and bones, a brown stock from meat seared first, with the soups that follow built on one or the other. The chief difference between the two is the browning in that skillet step. Stock of this kind was a household staple in such books, since it turned shin, neck and trimmings that would not roast into the base of soups and sauces, and the jelly that set on cooling showed that the gelatin had been extracted.