Dinner Soup
Carrot } 1/3 cup, each. Turnip }. Onion } cut in small pieces. 3½ lbs. lean beef from round 2 lbs. marrow-bone 2 qts. cold water 1 can tomatoes 1 teaspoon peppercorns 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon lean raw ham, finely chopped 2 tablespoons butter 1 sprig parsley. 1/2 bay leaf.
This is a long-simmered beef broth of the classic stock-pot type: meat, bone, cold water and aromatics, drawn out slowly and then strained. The ingredient list is what survives here, so a few of the working details are worth spelling out.
- The meat quantityThe figure printed for the lean beef, 31½ lbs., cannot be right against 2 qts. of water; it is almost certainly a mangled number. Treat the quantity as unresolved rather than assuming a conversion.
- Cold water, and plenty of timeStarting in cold water is the point of the method — it draws soluble protein and flavour out of the meat instead of sealing it in. Bring it up slowly, hold it at a bare shiver where a bubble breaks every few seconds, and give it three to four hours. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the broth past saving.
- Marrow-boneTwo pounds of cut marrow-bone is still sold by any butcher, often as "soup bones" or "canoe cut." It contributes gelatin and richness rather than much flavour; the beef does the flavouring.
- A can of tomatoesThe recipe does not say what size can, and period canned tomatoes were commonly sold in larger sizes than a modern 14.5 oz tin, so the quantity is uncertain. Whole peeled tomatoes with their juice are the right substitute; they lift an otherwise flat beef broth.
- Peppercorns wholeThey go in whole and are strained out with everything else. Ground pepper simmered for hours turns bitter and muddies the colour.
- SaltA tablespoon in two quarts is reasonable for the finished soup but not for one that reduces. Add half at the start and correct after straining.
- The ham and butterA tablespoon of finely chopped raw ham and two of butter suggest the fat and ham were used to start the pot rather than added to the water plain, though no method survives here to confirm it. The ham supplies cured depth that fresh beef alone will not give.
- Straining and fatStrain through cheesecloth, then chill. The fat lifts off in a firm cake and comes away in one piece, which is far easier than skimming hot.
- YieldSeveral hours of simmering and skimming will leave noticeably less liquid than the 2 qts. that went in, but the recipe gives no yield and none can be calculated while the meat quantity is unresolved.
History: This is squarely in the older camp of soup-making: a household stock-pot recipe built on meat and bone, aimed at the substantial soup that opened a formal dinner, at a period when cream soups and purees were beginning to crowd such stocks out. The presence of a can of tomatoes alongside the bone and the round is the telling detail — commercially canned tomatoes were a reliable year-round pantry item by the end of the nineteenth century, and cookbook writers folded them into stock recipes that a generation earlier would have relied on fresh vegetables in season or none at all.