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Second Stock
This is made with the bones, meat, vegetables, etc. that have been previously boiled in the first stock. After the liquor has been drained off them, pour in about three quarts of water, and let it simmer for four or five hours. Afterward strain it off into a basin, and keep it in a larder for making sauces, purees, etc., or it may have another quart of water added to it, and be boiled until reduced to one pint. Then strain it off into a basin. When cold it will be very stiff, and can be used for glaze. Veal Stock or Veal Blond Melt a small lump of butter in a stewpan, then put in four sliced onions, four pounds of leg of veal, two pounds of gravy beef, and two old fowls from which the flesh has been cut. Pour in one pint of stock, stand the stewpan over the fire, and boil the mixture down to a glaze, then pour in five quarts of stock, and put in a heaping tablespoonful of salt. When boiling, skim the stock, and add in some carrots and leeks, and let it simmer gently for four hours by the side of the fire. Strain the stock through a broth napkin, leave it until cool, then skim off all the fat. Trim the fat and chop the flesh of the fowls fine, place it in a mortar and pound it to a pulp; then put it into a large stewpan, mix in first a small quantity of veal stock, and then add the rest. Stand the stewpan over the fire, stir the contents till boiling, then move it to the side, and let it simmer gently for ten minutes. If quite clear at the end of that time, strain the stock through a broth napkin, to be kept until required.
Butters, Hot and Cold
Two professional kitchen preparations run together: a second extraction from spent first-stock bones (what French kitchens call a remouillage), and a rich veal stock clarified with pounded chicken. Both assume a coal range where a pot can sit at a bare tremble for hours.
- The hinge: never let either stock boil after skimmingA rolling boil emulsifies fat and suspended protein into the liquid and turns it cloudy and greasy, which defeats the whole point of a stock destined for sauces and glaze. "Simmer gently by the side of the fire" means roughly 180-190F, with a bubble breaking the surface every second or two.
- Second stock is a by-product, not a shortcutIt is drawn from bones and vegetables already exhausted once, so it is thin and lightly flavoured by design. Its job is to be the liquid you build the next stock or sauce on, in place of water. Judge it by that standard, not against a first stock.
- Gravy beefA British and colonial butcher's term for lean, gelatinous stewing cuts, usually shin or leg. Beef shin is the direct modern equivalent; chuck will do.
- Old fowlsStewing hens or boiling fowl, mature laying birds with tough flesh and a great deal of collagen and flavour. Supermarkets rarely stock them; a poultry butcher may, or use whole chicken legs and backs, which are the closest thing in connective tissue.
- "Boil down to a glaze"The pint of stock added at the start is reduced until it is a syrupy brown film coating the pan and the meat. That film is concentrated flavour, and the five quarts poured in afterward dissolve it. Do not walk away at this stage; it goes from glaze to burnt in a minute or two.
- Broth napkinA close-woven linen cloth. Use a double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve, or a damp jelly-bag. Wetting the cloth first stops it from soaking up your stock.
- The chicken clarificationPounded raw poultry flesh acts as the raft, in place of the egg white most modern recipes use. It coagulates as the liquid heats, trapping fine particles. Whisk it into cold or cool stock, stir until it comes up to heat, then stop stirring entirely or the raft breaks apart.
- Storage"Keep it in a larder" was sound in a cold stone room and is not sound in a modern house. Chill the strained stock rapidly, refrigerate up to three days, or freeze. The reduced glaze keeps considerably longer refrigerated because of its low water content, but treat it as a perishable, not a preserve.
- YieldThe second stock starts from three quarts of water and will give somewhat less than that after four or five hours' simmering, or one pint if reduced for glaze as the recipe directs. The veal stock starts from one pint plus five quarts and will finish appreciably short of that after four hours at the side of the fire, skimming and clarification. Either way it is restaurant volume; halve or quarter it for a home pot.
Oscar Tschirky's book appeared in 1896, when American hotel kitchens were reorganising themselves along the French lines that Escoffier was codifying at the Savoy in London at the same moment. The system here is pure grande cuisine economy: nothing leaves the kitchen unextracted. Bones go into the first stock, then into a second; the second becomes the liquid for sauces, or is boiled down to a glaze stiff enough to slice, which the saucier keeps at his elbow to fortify anything that tastes thin. Veal blond is the pale stock, meant for white sauces and clear soups where a dark stock would muddy the colour. Clarifying with pounded raw chicken rather than egg white is the older method, and is often said to have persisted in the hotel kitchens of the period; it clarifies and enriches at once. The scale, four pounds of veal and two whole fowls for a single pot of stock that is itself only an ingredient, is a fair measure of what a Waldorf kitchen thought reasonable.