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Second Stock for Use in Sauces, Etc
Break the bones from roasts; add the tough or browned bits of meat and fat; add also the flank ends from chops and steaks, cut small (there should always be a few bits of fresh meat), and cover with cold water. Heat slowly and let simmer two or three hours, then add, for each two quarts of water used, one-fourth a cup, each, of chopped onion and carrot, two stalks of celery and a tomato cut small, two teaspoonfuls of sweet herbs, two sprigs of parsley browned in two tablespoonfuls of butter or drippings, and cook about an hour. Strain and let cool. Stock will keep a day or two in summer and nearly a week in winter, if the cake of fat that forms upon the top be left undisturbed.
A thrifty brown stock built from roast bones and trimmings, meant to be kept on hand as a base for sauces and gravies. The method is sound; only the keeping instructions belong to the icebox era.
- Ignore the storage adviceStock held at room temperature under a fat cap is a reliable medium for Clostridium perfringens and other spore-formers, which survive the simmer and multiply as the pot cools. Chill it quickly in a shallow pan, refrigerate up to three days, or freeze it.
- What "second stock" meansThe title refers to stock made from bones and scraps already cooked once as a roast or chop, rather than from raw meat bought for the purpose. It will be thinner and less gelatinous than a first stock, so expect to reduce it before using it in a sauce.
- Add a few raw bitsThe parenthetical instruction matters. Bones and trimmings already cooked once have lost some of their flavour, so a handful of fresh meat is what keeps the result from tasting thin.
- Sweet herbsA period term for the mild kitchen herbs, chiefly thyme, marjoram, savory and sometimes basil, dried and often sold as a mixture. Two teaspoonfuls of dried mixed herbs to two quarts is about right.
- Simmer, never boilA rolling boil emulsifies the fat and drives the fine solids into suspension, giving a cloudy, greasy stock that will not clear. Hold it at a bare tremble and skim the scum in the first half hour.
- Browning the aromaticsThe parsley browned in butter or drippings colours and deepens the stock. Brown the onion and carrot in the same fat while you are at it, then deglaze the pan into the pot so nothing is left behind.
- No saltThe original calls for none. Season the finished sauce, not the stock, since a stock destined for reduction will concentrate whatever salt it carries.
- YieldExpect some loss to evaporation over the three to four hours of simmering, so the finished quantity will be less than the water you started with. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth, chill, then lift off the solid fat and save it as drippings.
Stock of this kind was the quiet engine of the nineteenth-century kitchen, and cookbooks of the period commonly distinguished a first stock, made from meat and bones bought for it, from a second stock scraped together from what a roast left behind. The distinction reflects a household where the same joint fed the table twice and the pot afterwards, and where bones went to the stockpot rather than the bin. Its appearance in a book of salads, sandwiches and chafing-dish cookery makes sense once you remember that a chafing dish is essentially a saucepan at the table: creamed dishes, ragouts and rarebits all wanted a little good brown liquid.