Soup Making
The art of soup making is more easily mastered than at first appears. The young housekeeper is startled at the amazingly large number of ingredients the recipe calls for, and often is discouraged. One may, with but little expense, keep at hand what is essential for the making of a good soup.
Winter vegetables - turnips, carrots, celery, and onions - may be bought in large or small quantities. The outer stalks of celery, often not suitable for serving, should be saved for soups. At seasons when celery is a luxury, the tips and roots should be saved and dried. Sweet herbs, including thyme, savory, and marjoram, are dried and put up in packages, retailing from five to ten cents. Bay leaves, which should be used sparingly, may be obtained at firstclass grocers' or druggists'; seeming never to lose strength, they may be kept indefinitely. Spices, including whole cloves, allspice berries, peppercorns, and stick cinnamon, should be kept on hand. These seasonings, with the addition of salt, pepper, and parsley, are the essential flavorings for stock soups. Flour, cornstarch, arrowroot, fine tapioca, sago, pearl barley, rice, bread, or eggs are added to give consistency and nourishment.
In small families, where there are few left-overs, fresh meat must be bought for the making of soup stock, as a good soup cannot be made from a small amount of poor material. On the other hand, large families need seldom buy fresh meat, provided all left-overs are properly cared for. The soup kettle should receive small pieces of beef (roasted, broiled, or stewed), veal, carcasses of fowl or chicken, chop bones, bones left from lamb roast, and all trimmings and bones, which a careful housewife should see are sent from the market with her order. Avoid the use of smoked or corned meats, or large pieces of raw mutton or lamb surrounded by fat, on account of the strong flavor so disagreeable to many. A small piece of bacon or lean ham is sometimes cooked with vegetables for flavor.
Beef ranks first as regards utility and economy in soup making. It should be cut from the fore or hind shin (which cuts contain marrow-bone), the middle cuts being most desirable. If the lower part of shin is used, the soup, although rich in gelatin, lacks flavor, unless a cheap piece of lean meat is used with it, which frequently is done. It must be remembered that meat, bone, and fat in the right proportions are all necessary; allow two-thirds lean meat, the remaining one-third bone and fat. From the meat the soluble juices, salts, extractives (which give color and flavor), and a small quantity of gelatin are extracted; from the bone, gelatin (which gives the stock when cold a jelly-like consistency) and mineral matter. Gelatin is also obtained from cartilage, skin, tendons, and ligaments. Some of the fat is absorbed; the remainder rises to the top and should be removed. Soup-stock making is rendered easier by use of proper utensils. Sharp meat knives, hardwood board, two purée strainers having meshes of different size, and a soup digester (a porcelain-lined iron pot, having tight-fitting cover, with valve in the top), or covered granite kettle, are essentials. An iron kettle, which formerly constituted one of the furnishings of a range, may be used if perfectly smooth. A saw, cleaver, and scales, although not necessary, are useful, and lighten labor.
When meat comes from market, remove from paper and put in cool place. When ready to start stock, if scales are at hand, weigh meat and bone to see if correct proportions have been sent. Wipe meat with clean cheesecloth wrung out of cold water. Cut lean meat in one-inch cubes; by so doing, a large amount of surface is exposed to the water, and juices are more easily drawn out. Heat frying-pan hissing hot; remove marrow from marrow-bone, and use enough to brown one-third of the lean meat, stirring constantly, that all parts of surface may be seared, thus preventing escape of juices, - sacrificing a certain amount of goodness in the stock to give additional color and flavor, which is obtained by caramelization. Put fat, bone, and remaining lean meat in soup kettle; cover with cold water, allowing one pint to each pound of meat, bone, and fat. Let stand one hour, that cold water may draw out juices from meat. Add browned meat, taking water from soup kettle to rinse out frying-pan, that none of the coloring may be lost. Heat gradually to boiling-point, and cook six or seven hours at low temperature. A scum will rise on the top, which contains coagulated albuminous juices; these give to soup its chief nutritive value; many, however, prefer a clear soup, and have them removed. If allowed to remain, when straining, a large part will pass through strainer. Vegetables, spices, and salt should be added the last hour of cooking. Strain and cool quickly; by so doing, stock is less apt to ferment. A knuckle of veal is often used for making white soup stock. Fowl should be used for stock in preference to chicken, as it is cheaper, and contains a larger amount of nutriment. A cake of fat forms on stock when cold, which excludes air, and should not be removed until stock is used. To remove fat, run a knife around edge of bowl and carefully remove the same. A small quantity will remain, which should be removed by passing a cloth wrung out of hot water around edge and over top of stock. This fat should be clarified and used for drippings. If time cannot be allowed for stock to cool before using, take off as much fat as possible with a spoon, and remove the remainder by passing tissue or any absorbent paper over the surface. How to Clear Soup Stock Whites of eggs slightly beaten, or raw, lean beef finely chopped, are employed for clearing soup stock. The albumen found in each effects the clearing by drawing to itself some of the juices which have been extracted from the meat, and by action of heat have been coagulated. Some rise to the top and form a scum, others are precipitated.
Remove fat from stock, and put quantity to be cleared in stew-pan, allowing white and shell of one egg to each quart of stock. Beat egg slightly, break shell in small pieces and add to stock. Place on front of range, and stir constantly until boiling-point is reached; boil two minutes. Set back where it may simmer twenty minutes; remove scum, and strain through double thickness of cheesecloth placed over a fine strainer. If stock to be cleared is not sufficiently seasoned, additional seasoning must be added as soon as stock has lost its jelly-like consistency; not after clearing is effected. Many think the flavor obtained from a few shavings of lemon rind an agreeable addition. How to Bind Soups Cream soups and purées, if allowed to stand, separate, unless bound together. To bind a soup, melt butter, and when bubbling add an equal quantity of flour; when well mixed add to soup, stirring constantly until boiling-point is reached. If recipe calls for more flour than butter, or soup is one that should be made in double boiler, add gradually a portion of hot mixture to butter and flour until of such consistency that it may be poured into the mixture remaining in double boiler.
Beneath the essay is a complete working method for brown stock: two-thirds lean meat to one-third bone and fat, a pint of cold water per pound, an hour's cold soak, then six or seven hours below a boil. Everything else is commentary on that skeleton.
- The hinge: never let it boil"Heat gradually to boiling-point, and cook six or seven hours at low temperature" means bring it just to the point of movement and then hold it at a bare shiver, with the odd bubble breaking; the book gives no temperature. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat into the liquid and clouds the stock, and clarifying afterwards will not necessarily restore it.
- The proportions, in modern termsFor 4 lb of shin, cut so that roughly two-thirds (about 2 lb 10 oz) is lean meat and the rest bone, marrow and fat, use 4 pints (8 cups) of cold water, per the book's pint to each pound of meat, bone and fat. Expect to strain off rather less than the 2 quarts you started with, depending on how tightly the kettle is covered.
- Cuts to ask for"Fore or hind shin" is beef shank; ask the butcher for centre-cut shank, bone in, sawn into rounds. "Knuckle of veal" for white stock is the veal shank joint, now scarce and expensive — veal or beef marrow bones plus a piece of lean chuck give a similar body. "Fowl" means an old laying hen, not a broiler; a supermarket stewing hen or a bag of chicken backs and wings is the practical substitute.
- The browning stepOnly one-third of the lean meat is browned, and it is browned in marrow rather than oil. Get the pan genuinely hot, work in batches so the cubes sear rather than steam, and deglaze with stock water as directed — the fond in the pan is most of the colour you are paying for.
- Skim, or don'tThe book is candid that the scum is coagulated protein with real food value and that removing it is an aesthetic choice. If you want a clear consommé, skim early, before the surface film breaks up and disperses; the book sets no time limit.
- Vegetables and spices lateAdding the mirepoix, bay, cloves, peppercorns and salt only in the final hour is still best practice. Vegetables simmered for seven hours go flat and slightly sour, and salt added early concentrates as the stock reduces.
- Cooling, and the fat cap"Cool quickly" was a principal defence against spoilage in an unrefrigerated pantry, and it remains the food-safety rule: get the stock from hot to below 40F within a few hours, in shallow containers or over an ice bath, rather than leaving a deep pot to sit overnight. The solidified fat cap does seal the surface, as the book says, but treat refrigerated stock as a three-to-four-day proposition and freeze the rest.
- Clearing with eggOne egg white plus its crushed shell per quart, brought to a boil with constant stirring, then simmered undisturbed for twenty minutes. Stop stirring once it boils or the raft will break up; ladle the finished consommé out through cheesecloth rather than pouring, which disturbs the sediment.
- BindingThis is a plain roux — butter melted to bubbling with an equal quantity of flour, the book not specifying weight or volume — whisked into the soup and brought to a boil to cook out the starch. The instruction about tempering a portion of the hot mixture into the butter and flour applies, per the book, when the recipe calls for more flour than butter or when the soup is made in a double boiler.
- Equipment translationsA "soup digester" is a porcelain-lined pot with a valved lid, an early pressure vessel; a heavy stockpot with a loose lid does the same job here. "Granite" kettle means enamelled steel. A chinois or a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth replaces the two purée strainers.
Fannie Farmer's chapter opens with reassurance because stock was, in her day, the test of whether a household was thrifty or wasteful. The soup kettle was the destination for chop bones, poultry carcasses and roast trimmings, and the essay reads as much like an argument for household economy as a cooking lesson — note the aside that a careful housewife should see that trimmings and bones are sent with her order. The chemistry is period-correct in outline and period-flavoured in emphasis: the belief that the albuminous scum carries "the chief nutritive value" of the soup reflects the late nineteenth-century enthusiasm for meat extractives, championed commercially by beef-tea and bouillon manufacturers, which later nutritional work largely deflated. The technique itself, cold-water soak, slow extraction, late vegetables, egg-white raft, is straight French kitchen practice, filtered through the Boston Cooking School's habit of explaining the reason for every step rather than simply issuing the order.