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To Make Good Stock
220. Put whatever bones are at hand in the digester (previously breaking them in pieces); boil them for three or four hours at least, then pour off the liquor into the stock-pot, and add to each gallon the meat off a knuckle of veal, a pound of lean beef, and a pound of the lean of a gammon of bacon, all sliced, with two or three scraped carrots, two onions, two turnips, two heads of celery sliced, and two quarts of water. Stew the meat quite tender, but do not let it burn. When thus prepared it will serve either for soup, or brown or white gravy. If for BROWN GRAVY, add colouring, and boil a few minutes. One knuckle of veal, two pounds of lean beef, or a shin of beef, a quarter of a pound of ham, with a cow-heel, will make sufficient soup for a party of eighteen. A little Indian soy, or shalot wine, is a great improvement in flavouring brown soups. A little sugar improves almost every soup. When you make any kind of soupparticularly portable, vermicelli, or brown gravy soup, or any soup that has roots or herbs in, always observe to lay these last over the meat, cover it close and set it over a very slow fire; this will draw all the virtue out of the roots or herbs, and give the soup a very different flavour to that which it has when water is put to it at first. When the gravy is almost dried up, fill the pan with water, and as soon as it begins to boil take off the fat, and follow the directions of the receipt according to the sort of soup which it is desired to make. When it is desired to make old peas soup, take soft water; but for green peas
This is a Victorian household stock in the grand manner: bones extracted first, then a second cooking with fresh meat and roots to build flavour. The key instruction is buried in the middle — sweat the vegetables and meat together over very low heat before any water goes in.
- The digesterA digester was a lidded iron vessel with a weighted or screwed-down top, an early pressure cooker used chiefly for reducing bones to jelly. A modern pressure cooker does the same job in about 90 minutes; a covered stockpot at a bare simmer needs the full three to four hours the recipe specifies.
- Gallons and quartsBritish measures here: an imperial gallon is about 4.5 litres, a quart about 1.1 litres. If you scale the recipe, work in litres rather than assuming US volumes, or the meat-to-liquid ratio will come out too rich.
- Gammon of baconThe lean of a gammon means the cured hind leg; period bacon could be smoked or unsmoked ('green'). A piece of mild unsmoked bacon or a raw gammon steak, trimmed of fat, is the closest thing; heavily smoked bacon will dominate a stock intended to be neutral enough for white gravy.
- Cow-heelCow-heel is the foot, valued purely for gelatine — it gives a stock that sets firmly when cold. Ask a butcher for split beef feet, or substitute a couple of pounds of sawn knuckle or shin bone with plenty of connective tissue.
- ColouringThe "colouring" for brown gravy was a household bottle of caramel, made by burning sugar to a dark bitter syrup and letting it down with water. Gravy browning is the commercial descendant; a spoonful of tomato paste and well-browned bones do the job with less bitterness.
- Draw out the roots firstLaying the vegetables over the meat under a tight lid over a very slow fire is a sweat, not a fry. Done properly the pan liquid nearly dries and just begins to catch — that is where the depth of a brown soup comes from. Watch it closely; scorched roots turn the whole pot acrid and cannot be rescued.
- Indian soy and shalot wineIndian soy was an early imported soy sauce; shalot wine was shallots steeped in sherry or white wine. A teaspoon of dark soy sauce and a splash of dry sherry are the nearest modern stand-ins.
- Cooling and keepingThe recipe gives no keeping instructions. Chill the finished stock quickly in shallow containers, refrigerate up to four days, or freeze. Leaving a large pot of stock to cool slowly at room temperature is the one real hazard in the method.