Chicken Soup
6 cups White Stock III. 1 tablespoon lean raw ham, finely chopped 6 slices carrot, cut in cubes 2 stalks celery 1/2 bay leaf ¼ teaspoon peppercorns 1 sliced onion 1/3 cup hot boiled rice Add seasonings to stock, heat gradually to boiling-point, and boil thirty minutes; strain, and add rice. over.
A clear chicken broth finished with rice, in the Boston Cooking-School manner: aromatics simmered in stock, strained out, and a little cooked rice dropped in at the last moment.
- The stock is assumedThe ingredient list names only the seasonings; the recipe expects you to have chicken stock already made. The quantity is not stated; something in the region of a quart would suit the amount of vegetable and rice given.
- PeppercornsThe printed quantity is garbled; most likely a quarter teaspoon of whole peppercorns, which would suit roughly a quart of stock. They are strained out with the rest.
- Lean raw hamA tablespoon of chopped raw ham is used as a seasoning, not a meat. Prosciutto or the trimmings from a dry-cured country ham do the same work; ordinary wet-cured deli ham contributes mostly salt and water.
- Thirty minutes of boilingModern practice keeps a clear soup at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, which clouds the broth by agitating fine particles. Thirty minutes at a simmer extracts everything the carrot, celery and onion have to give.
- Add the rice at the endThe rice is boiled separately and stirred in after straining, so the broth stays clear and the grains keep their shape. Rice cooked in the soup releases starch and turns the whole thing cloudy and thick, which is the opposite of the intention here.
- Bay leafHalf a bay leaf is a deliberately small amount. Use a whole small leaf if yours are old and papery.
- Seasoning at the endNo salt is listed; the stock and the ham would already carry some. Taste after straining and correct then.
The soup chapter is built on a single foundation of stock, then varied by what is added to it and what is strained out again "clear soups" like this one were the polite opening of a proper dinner, judged as much on transparency as on flavour. The scrap of raw ham is a thrifty professional habit often said to be borrowed from French kitchens, where a bit of cured pork was reportedly used to deepen a broth without adding fat or clouding it. Rice as a garnish, cooked apart and added by the spoonful, belongs to the same logic: soups are taught here as a set of interchangeable parts, so that one pot of stock on the back of the range could become half a dozen dishes over a week.