Home › Soups › An Economical Soup
An Economical Soup
.
Take a soup bone (any piece of beef not too fat will do), wash well, place in kettle with sufficient cold water for soup; let it boil, * Written especially for this book, by W. A. CROFFUT, editor of "American Queen," New York. skim thoroughly and continue to boil slowly from three to six hours, according to size and quality of meat; one hour before dinner, put in cabbage cut in quarters, sprinkling it with salt; quarter of an hour after add turnips halved or quartered according to size; quarter of an hour after turnips, add potatoes whole, or cut in two if large (turnips and potatoes should be pared and laid in cold water half an hour before using). When done take out vegetables and meat, place in heater, or if you have no heater, place plates over a pot or skillet of boiling water. If there is not enough soup, add boiling water, stir in a little thickening of flour and water, let it boil thoroughly; season to the taste with salt and pepper and serve at once. The soup will be excellent and the vegetables very fine.
This is a boiled dinner and a soup from one pot, with the vegetables staged so each finishes at the same moment. The original assumes a coal range at a low steady heat and a cook who is in the kitchen anyway.
- Do not actually boil it"Boil slowly" in nineteenth-century usage means what we call a bare simmer, with the surface barely trembling. A hard boil emulsifies the fat and collagen into the liquid and gives you cloudy, greasy broth instead of clear stock.
- The soup boneAsk for beef shank, oxtail or short rib on the bone. Marrow bones alone give little flavour; you want meat and connective tissue as well. Three to four pounds of bone-in meat to three or four quarts of cold water is a reasonable ratio.
- Skim early, then leave it aloneThe grey scum rises in the first fifteen to twenty minutes as the water comes up to temperature. Take it off then; once the pot settles into a simmer, little more should form.
- Cabbage timingAn hour is long for quartered cabbage by modern taste — it will collapse and turn sulphurous. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough for wedges, so add it with the turnips rather than ahead of them.
- Why the vegetables soakPared turnips and potatoes were laid in cold water to keep them from browning before they hit the pot, in a kitchen where prep happened well ahead of the meal. It does no harm and still prevents discolouration.
- The thickeningA "little thickening of flour and water" means a slurry, roughly a tablespoon of flour whisked smooth into a quarter cup of cold water per quart of broth. It must boil a full two or three minutes or the soup tastes of raw flour.
- DegreasingBeef shank throws a good deal of fat. If you can, cool the broth and lift the solid cap off; if serving straight away, blot the surface with paper towel or skim with a wide spoon.
- Yield and serviceA pot of the size suggested above should give roughly six to eight servings. The recipe implies two courses from one pot: the thickened broth first, then the meat and vegetables kept hot in a heater or over boiling water, seasoned with salt and pepper.
The "economical" in the title is the whole point: one cheap cut of bone-in beef yields a soup course and a meat-and-vegetable course for a family, the kind of arithmetic often associated with American home cooking in the 1880s, when The Dixie Cook-Book was compiled. The method belongs to the same family as New England boiled dinner and the French pot-au-feu.