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Celery (Wipe and cut meat in inch)
Wipe, and cut meat in inch cubes. Put two-thirds of meat in soup kettle, and soak in water thirty minutes. Brown remainder in hot frying-pan with marrow from marrow-bone. Put browned meat and bone in kettle. Heat to boilingpoint; skim thoroughly, and cook at temperature below boiling-point five hours. Add seasonings and vegetables, cook one hour, strain, and cool. Remove fat, and clear. Serve in bouillon cups.
This is the standard Boston Cooking School method for a clear celery-flavored consommé built on beef shin and marrow bone. The ingredient list has been separated from the method on this page, so the quantities have to be reconstructed; the technique, though, is complete and still sound.
- What the missing ingredients wereThe ingredient list is not printed on this page, so the quantities cannot be recovered from the text. Stock formulas of this type call for lean beef from the shin with a marrow bone, cold water, celery with the leaves, an onion, a carrot, a few peppercorns and cloves, a bay leaf and salt. The proportions are a guess, not a transcription.
- The hinge: never let it boil"Cook at temperature below boiling-point" is the whole point. A bare shiver of movement at the surface -- modern kitchens usually put that around 180-185F, though the book gives no figure -- keeps fat and albumin from emulsifying into the liquid; a rolling boil clouds the stock and makes it much harder to clear.
- Why two-thirds is soaked coldThe cold soak draws soluble protein and flavor out of the raw meat before heat sets it. The browned third and the marrow supply the roasted note and color. Skipping the soak gives you a paler, flatter stock.
- Marrow boneAsk a butcher for a cut beef femur; the marrow is scooped out and used as the fat for browning. Beef fat or a neutral oil will brown the meat as well, but you lose some of the body the marrow gives.
- "Clear" means clarifyAfter the fat is lifted from the chilled stock, clearing is done with egg white and crushed shell beaten into the cold stock, brought slowly to the boiling point and stirred as it heats, then strained through cheesecloth. The book treats this as understood; a modern reader may not.
- CoolingCool it in a shallow pan or an ice-water bath and refrigerate once it is below room temperature, then lift the fat cap the next day.
- Vegetables go in lateThe celery, onion and carrot cook only the final hour, as the recipe directs, rather than through the whole five hours with the meat.
Clear soups were the mark of a careful kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, and the Boston Cooking School devoted pages to the difference between stock, broth, bouillon and consomm e soup plates.