No. 188

White Chicken Bouillon or Broth

Bouillon Blanc de Volaille

Have ten quarts of water in a soup pot; add to it three pounds of knuckle of veal, and trimmings, seven pounds of very fresh poultry. Boil, skim, and put in three quarters of a pound of carrots, half a pound of turnips, twelve ounces of leeks, two onions, one stuck with two cloves, two ounces of celery, one ounce of parsley roots, two bay leaves, salt, sixty grains of whole peppers; boil slowly and continuously for four hours, then strain through a silk sieve. If needed in a great hurry, boil six quarts of ordinary stock, have two fowls of three pounds each, after removing the breasts, chop the remainder of the fowls coarsely, put them in the stock, add four ounces of minced carrots and six ounces of leeks also minced, boil slowly for one hour; skim off the fat, season with salt, strain through a fine sieve or moistened napkin, and serve. The breasts are used for forcemeat or to clarify broth.

← No. 187 Clear Bouillon Soups & Broths No. 189 Clarified Consomme →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's-scale stock: ten quarts of water and ten pounds of meat and bone, meant to feed a restaurant service. Halving or quartering it changes nothing but the pot size, and the second method in the entry is a genuinely quick version worth knowing.

The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep it at a bare simmer. After the initial boil and skim, Ranhofer's "boil slowly and continuously" is best read as a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil, which emulsifies fat and shed protein into the liquid and costs the clarity this bouillon is named for.
Knuckle of vealThe joint end of the shank, sold today as veal knuckle bone or cut osso buco style. It is there for gelatin, not flavor. Ask a butcher to saw it; a whole knuckle will not release much unless the bone is opened.
"Very fresh poultry"Most likely stewing fowl along with the carcasses, wings, necks and backs a restaurant kitchen had on hand, though the recipe specifies only seven pounds of very fresh poultry. Seven pounds of chicken backs and wings, or two whole birds, will stand in; modern broilers are younger and blander, so lean on the wings and feet for body.
Sixty grains of whole peppersAmbiguous: it can be read as sixty peppercorns or as sixty apothecaries' grains by weight, which is about 4 g. The two are not equivalent — sixty peppercorns is roughly three-quarters of a teaspoon, 4 g nearer a teaspoon and a half — but either is a modest amount of pepper for ten quarts.
Silk sieve and moistened napkinA fine-mesh conical strainer lined with damp, unbleached muslin or a doubled coffee filter does the same work. Wetting the cloth first keeps it from drinking up a cup of your broth.
Season at the endSalt goes in early here only lightly. The pot will lose a good deal of volume over four hours of uncovered simmering, and a broth salted to taste at the start will be too salty by the finish.
The quick versionRanhofer offers it "if needed in a great hurry": raw chopped fowl simmered an hour in existing stock adds fresh chicken flavor, the same principle as fortifying a stock.
Yield and keepingThe long method gives roughly six to seven quarts after reduction and straining. Chill it fast in a shallow pan or an ice bath rather than leaving the pot on the stove overnight, then lift the set fat cap before use.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its soup chapter is organized the way a professional kitchen actually worked: a handful of foundation liquids, each numbered, each cross-referenced by the dishes built on it. Bouillon blanc is the pale one, kept white by using veal and poultry rather than roasted beef bones. The note that the breasts are reserved "for forcemeat or to clarify broth" is the tell of a restaurant book rather than a domestic one: raw lean chicken beaten with egg white is the classic clarifying raft, and nothing in a kitchen of that scale went out with the trimmings. Home cookbooks of the same decade were already recommending bouillon as an invalid food and a between-courses restorative.