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Chicken Bouillon
Two ounces concentrated chicken and ½ ounce sweet cream. Stir while adding hot water, after seasoning with a little spice.
A soda-fountain hot drink rather than a soup: the counterman drew the concentrate into a mug and shot hot water in from the fountain's hot-water faucet. Everything hinges on adding the water gradually while stirring, or the cream breaks and the drink looks curdled.
- "Concentrated chicken"Almost certainly a commercial chicken extract or essence, of the same family as the beef extracts of the period: thick and salty. The closest modern stand-in is a concentrated chicken base or glace de volaille, not a cube's worth of powder.
- Two ounces is a fountain measureTwo ounces -- the recipe does not say whether this is weight or fluid measure. Either way, two ounces of a modern paste-style base would be wildly oversalted; taste as you dilute and treat the figure as a period product ratio rather than a spec.
- Half an ounce sweet creamOne tablespoon. "Sweet" only distinguishes it from soured or cultured cream; the fat content is not specified, though a rich cream suits the drink.
- Hot waterThe recipe specifies no temperature and does not say boiling. Hot rather than furiously boiling water, added gradually, gives the smoothest result.
- "A little spice"The recipe has the seasoning going in before the water, i.e. into the concentrate. What was meant is not stated; celery salt, pepper, paprika or mace would all fit. Given how salty such a base is, lean on pepper rather than more salt.
- YieldOne cupful; the recipe leaves the amount of water to the maker, so the finished volume is a matter of taste.
Hot drinks helped fountains through the cold months, and hot chocolate, malted milk, clam broth and chicken bouillon all appear on winter fountain lists, built from concentrates and hot water. Bouillon at the counter also sat comfortably alongside the era's faith in beef tea and meat extracts as restoratives for the tired and the convalescent. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of trade formularies, which gave proportions and little else.