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Mixed Stock
Put the trimmings and bones of any kind of meat into a stockpot with one quart of water with every two pounds of meat and bones, and place it over the fire until the contents commence to boil. Skim the stock, move it to the side, and let it simmer very slowly for six or seven hours. At the end of that time put into the stockpot a bunch of sweet herbs, a moderate sized onion with half a dozen cloves stuck in it, and one teaspoonful of peppercorns. Keep the stock simmering for two hours longer, removing the scum occasionally; then strain it through a fine hair-sieve into a large bowl, and set away in a cool place. On the next morning skim off the fat.
A working kitchen's all-purpose stock, written for a range that never went out and a larder that always had bones. The proportions and the method still hold; the cooling instruction is the one line to ignore.
- The ratioOne quart of water to every two pounds of meat and bones. That is a comparatively lean ratio, which is why the result has body — do not be tempted to cover the bones deeply.
- Aromatics go in lateHerbs, onion and peppercorns enter only for the final two hours. Long boiling turns peppercorns harsh and cooks the freshness out of herbs, so resist adding them at the start out of habit.
- A bunch of sweet herbsPeriod shorthand for a tied bundle of mild aromatic herbs, most often some combination of parsley, thyme, marjoram, savory and bay — close in function to a bouquet garni. Tie it so you can lift it out.
- SkimmingThe scum that rises as the pot comes to the boil is coagulated protein and it will cloud the stock if it is stirred back in. Skim before the pot goes to the side, and never let it reach a rolling boil afterwards; a bare shiver at the surface is what "simmer very slowly" means.
- Hair sieveA fine sieve of woven horsehair. A fine mesh strainer lined with damp muslin or a coffee filter gives the same clarity.
- Cooling"Set away in a cool place" assumed a cold larder and a shallow crock. A stockpot of hot liquid left on a modern countertop sits for hours in the range where bacteria multiply. Divide it into shallow containers, cool quickly in an ice-water bath, then refrigerate.
- The fat capLifting the solid fat off the next morning is still the easiest way to degrease. That fat is worth keeping for frying if the stock was mostly beef or poultry.
- Yield and keepingEight pounds of bones and four quarts of water reduce to roughly two to three quarts of finished stock. It keeps four days refrigerated and freezes well; reduced to a glaze it keeps far longer.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically a chef — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel — and the provenance of the recipes in the 1896 book under his name is contested, though a French-trained kitchen of that period would typically have kept a stockpot going more or less continuously. "Mixed stock" is the household and hotel compromise: unlike the carefully segregated white and brown stocks of the classical repertoire, it takes the trimmings of any kind of meat, which is exactly what a large kitchen generates over a day of butchering. The eight- or nine-hour extraction and the overnight rest in a cool larder reflect a kitchen that ran on continuous coal heat and had no refrigeration to speak of, only a cold room; the fat cap that formed overnight was itself a seal that helped the stock keep. Recipes of this shape appear in nearly every American and English cookery book of the nineteenth century, generally traced back to the French *bouillon* of the classical tradition.