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Caramel for Soups
For caramel, put one tea-cup sugar and two tea-spoons water in a sauce-pan over the fire, stir constantly till it is a dark color, then add a half tea-cup water and a pinch of salt, let boil for a few moments, take off, and when cold bottle.
To brown flour, put one pint in a sauce-pan on the stove, and when it begins to color, stir constantly till it is a dark brown, being careful that it does not burn. When cold put away in a tin can or jar covered closely, and keep in a dry place where it is always ready for soups or gravies. As it requires more of this for thickening than of unbrowned flour, it may be well sometimes to take half of each.
A few cloves may be stuck in the meat for soup; or it may first be fried in a sauce-pan with a little butter, turning till brown on all sides; or sliced onions may be fried brown and added to soup.
Two pantry staples in one entry: a burnt-sugar colouring and a jar of dry-toasted flour, both meant to give pale stocks and gravies the deep brown that Victorian cooks expected of a good soup. Neither is difficult, but the caramel step has a genuine hazard in it.
- The hinge: adding water to molten sugarCaramel at the dark stage is roughly 350F, far above boiling, and cold water hitting it will erupt in steam and spitting sugar. Pull the pan off the heat, use hot water, add it in a slow trickle at arm's length, and expect the mass to seize before it dissolves back smooth over low heat.
- TeacupNineteenth-century American books are not consistent, but a teacup is usually reckoned at about 6 fl oz, which would give roughly 3/4 cup sugar and 6 tablespoons of water added later. The proportions are forgiving; you are making a syrup, not a confection.
- How dark is darkTake the sugar past amber to the colour of strong coffee, when it begins to smoke faintly and smells sharp rather than sweet. Stop short of black. Burnt caramel turns acrid and will carry that bitterness into everything you tint with it.
- Yield and doseYou will get somewhere between half and two-thirds of a cup of dark syrup. A teaspoon or two colours a large pot of soup; add it at the end, off the boil, and judge by eye. Store it in a bottle at room temperature, where it keeps for months.
- Browning the flourA pint of flour is about 8 oz. A dry skillet over medium heat takes 15 to 25 minutes of near-constant stirring; a sheet pan in a 350F oven, stirred every five minutes, is easier to control and browns more evenly. It is done at the colour of milk chocolate and smells like toast.
- Why it thickens lessToasting breaks down the starch, so browned flour has perhaps half to two-thirds the thickening power of raw. The book's suggestion of a fifty-fifty blend is sound practice, and still the standard way to get colour without a soupy gravy.
- StorageCool it completely before it goes into the jar. Warm flour sealed in a tin sweats and cakes. Kept dry and closed it holds for several months, though it loses aroma.
- Modern equivalentsBottled gravy browning and caramel colouring on the supermarket shelf do much the same job, industrially produced (by rather different processes, and usually with salt and other ingredients added). The homemade version has more flavour and no additives, which is the only reason to bother.
Browning was a preoccupation of nineteenth-century soup cookery: a stock built from pale meat and vegetables would not reach the deep colour cooks wanted on its own. Burnt-sugar colouring appears in English household books well before this one, often sold ready-made as "browning," while browned flour is the dry cousin of the French roux brun - the same principle without the fat. The closing suggestions here - cloves stuck in the meat, meat browned in butter, onions fried dark - are the same instinct expressed three more ways.