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Bouillon and Cream
Dissolve a bouillon cube in hot water. Stir well and add sweet cream. Season with pepper and salt.
A two-ingredient invalid drink that depends entirely on proportion, since the original gives none. Treat it as one cup of broth to a tablespoon or two of cream.
- ProportionsOne bouillon cube to 6-8 oz of hot water is roughly what most brands call for today, though some cubes are meant for two cups, so check the packet. Crushing the cube against the bottom of the cup before the water goes in helps it dissolve without lumps. Add 1-2 tablespoons of cream, no more, or the broth flavour disappears.
- "Sweet cream"This means fresh, unsoured cream, not sweetened cream. Heavy or light cream both work.
- HeatWarm the cream slightly or add it to broth that has come off the boil. Cold cream dropped into boiling salty liquid can curdle at the edges, which looks wrong in a clear cup even though it is harmless.
- SaltBouillon cubes today are heavily salted, commonly several hundred milligrams of sodium or more per cube. Taste before you season; the added salt is usually unnecessary.
- PepperWhite pepper rather than black keeps the drink looking clean. A few grinds is enough.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; as scaled here it makes about one cup, served hot. It does not hold; make it when it is wanted.
Beef tea and broths had long been the standard nourishment for the sick, on the belief that a patient who could not eat could still absorb the "strength" of meat in liquid form; concentrated meat extracts date from the mid-nineteenth century, but the pressed bouillon cube itself was a product of the first decade of the twentieth, and it put that ritual within reach of any kitchen with a kettle. Adding cream was a way of turning a thin savoury drink into something with a little fat and body behind it, closer to a light soup than a beverage. Nutritionally the faith in beef tea was misplaced, as later analysis of extracts showed, but the cup of hot bouillon kept its place in nursing practice well into the twentieth century.