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Deer Lodge Marrow-Glaze Soup
The excellence of this soup depends on the soup bone having plenty of meat and marrow. 3-4 ounces of the marrow is removed and set aside and 1 quart of water added to each pound of meat, with an onion thrown in for flavor. This is brought to boiling point, skimmed carefully, seasoned to taste with salt and pepper, and boiled slowly 4-5 hours.
When about ready to hollar "Come and get it!" add 2 tablespoons of butter to the reserved marrow and beat to a foam with a fork, removing all stringy bits. Add 2 beaten eggs, a few shakes of pepper and gratings of nutmeg and sufficient flour to make a thick paste. Remove onion and bone from soup, drop in portions of marrow mixture, boil a few minutes, and serve.
A long-simmered beef broth finished with marrow dumplings — the German Markklösschen in camp dress. The dumplings are the whole point, and they are the part most easily ruined.
- The boneAsk for cut marrow bones or a meaty shank, 2–3 lb. You need both: the meat makes the broth, the hollow bone gives up the 3–4 oz of marrow the dumplings depend on. Scoop the marrow out raw and cold, when it slides free in one piece.
- RatioOne quart of water per pound of meat gives a broth that reduces to something worth eating over 4–5 hours. Skim in the first twenty minutes, before the pot reaches a hard boil, or the scum breaks up and clouds it.
- "Boiled slowly"Keep it at a bare tremble, around 180–190F. A rolling boil for five hours emulsifies fat into the stock and turns it grey and greasy.
- Beating the marrowMarrow beats to a foam only when soft but not melted — let it sit at room temperature 20 minutes, no warmer. If it goes oily and liquid the dumplings will fall apart in the pot. Pick out every stringy strand and bit of membrane.
- Flour by feelThe recipe says only "sufficient flour." Work it in a spoonful at a time until the paste holds a soft shape on the fork — perhaps 1/2 to 3/4 cup, depending on the marrow. Test one dumpling first; if it disintegrates, beat in a little more.
- Cooking the dumplingsDrop them into broth held just below the boil, not the "boil a few minutes" of the original. Marrow dumplings poach in 8–10 minutes and burst if agitated. They are done when they float and feel set.
- Strain before servingLift out bone and onion, then pass the broth through a sieve into a clean pot before the dumplings go in. Any stray bone chip or scum ruins the clarity that five hours bought.
- YieldAt the recipe's ratio, a bone carrying about 3 lb of meat takes 3 quarts of water and will serve six as a first course; the 3-4 oz of marrow with 2 eggs makes a dozen or so small dumplings, depending on how you size them.
Marrow dumplings floated in clear beef broth are a standing dish of southern German and Austrian cooking, where they are called Markklösschen or Markknödel, and dishes of this kind travelled to America with nineteenth-century German immigrants. The name appears to refer to Deer Lodge, in the Montana cattle country, and the "come and get it" suggests a camp or ranch kitchen rather than a city dining room — places where a long-boiling stockpot on the back of the stove was routine and where a big soup bone was cheap or free. What the "glaze" of the title is meant to convey is not explained; presumably it refers to the rich body a marrow-heavy bone gives a broth after several hours.