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Clear French Stock
Cut up six or seven pounds of beef, place it in a stockpot with some crushed bones and a few peeled turnips, carrots, parsnips and one broiled onion, a bunch of laurel leaf and parsley, two or three cloves, a small lump of sugar, and pepper and salt to taste. Pour in three quarts of water, place the stockpot over the fire until the liquor boils; then skim it well, move it to the side and let it simmer for six or seven hours. At the end of that time skim the stock again, then strain it into a basin. When cold remove all the fat from the top and it is ready for use.
A classical brown-tinged beef stock, written for a hotel kitchen where a stockpot sat at the back of the range all day. The proportions are unusually rich by modern standards and the method depends entirely on restraint at the heat.
- Never let it boil after the first skimClarity is the whole point of a "clear" stock. Once it reaches the boil, move it so only a lazy bubble or two breaks the surface — around 185–195F. A rolling boil emulsifies fat and drives fine particles through the liquid, and no amount of straining afterwards will recover it.
- "One broiled onion"An onion halved through the equator and charred cut-side down, either under a broiler or dry in a heavy pan until genuinely black in patches. It supplies colour and a faint bitterness that reads as depth. Leaving the skin on adds more colour still.
- Laurel leafBay. Two or three dried leaves is right for this volume; fresh bay is stronger and one will do.
- Meat-to-water ratioSix or seven pounds of beef to three quarts of water is roughly twice as concentrated as a domestic stock. Shin, chuck and oxtail all work; the crushed bones are for gelatin, so ask for marrow and knuckle rather than clean-cut soup bones.
- The lump of sugarA period lump of loaf sugar was roughly the size of a modern cube, about a teaspoon, though lump sizes varied. The recipe does not say why it is there, and a quantity this small will not sweeten the stock. Do not scale it up with the rest of the recipe.
- Six or seven hoursReasonable for beef and bone, and it is where the body comes from. The vegetables will be very soft by the end; some modern kitchens add the turnip, carrot and parsnip only for the final hour or two.
- StrainingThe "basin" is simply the bowl it goes into; the recipe says nothing about the sieve. A fine sieve lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter gives a noticeably cleaner result. Ladle rather than pour, and stop before you disturb the sludge at the bottom of the pot.
- CoolingThree quarts of hot stock left to cool on a counter sits in the bacterial danger zone for hours. Cool it fast in a sink of iced water, then refrigerate; the fat lifts off the cold surface in a single sheet.
- Yield and keepingNo yield is given; expect appreciably less than the three quarts of water you started with, depending on how hard it simmers. Four days refrigerated, or freeze it — reducing it hard first gives a concentrate that stores in ice-cube trays.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf from 1893 and put his name to The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf in 1896. A clear stock like this one is the foundation much of that repertoire rests on: consommés, the clear soups that opened a formal dinner, and the sauces built on reduction. The parsnip suggests an Anglo-American kitchen rather than a strictly Parisian one — French classical practice leans on carrot, onion, leek and celery — though turnip is standard in French pot-au-feu and appears in classical French stocks too. The instruction to keep a pot going for six or seven hours also says something about the period's kitchens: a coal range lit all day held a low, steady back-of-the-stove heat, which is precisely the condition a clear stock wants and the one a modern cook has to work to imitate.