No. 194a

Beef Stock or Broth

Bouillon de Boeuf

Proportion of Ingredients.—Ten quarts of water, a quarter of a pound of chicken legs, one and one quarter ounces of salt, six ounces of leeks, half ounce of soup celery, eight pounds of meat with bone, twenty grains or cloves of black pepper, six ounces of carrots, one half ounce of parsnip, one half clove of garlic (if desired), two whole cloves, three ounces turnips, four ounces of onions, one of which stuck with two cloves.

Put ten quarts of water into a stockpot, add eight pounds of beef meat (trimmings and bone), let there be at least two-thirds meat, being careful to have both meat and trimmings well freed of fat; and a quarter of a pound of scalded chicken legs, after removing the outer skin. Heat this up slowly so that it comes gradually to a boil, then skim carefully and add twenty grains of whole black peppers and one and one quarter ounces of salt. Put into a net six ounces of carrots, three ounces of turnips, six ounces of leeks, half an ounce of parsnips, one half an ounce of soup celery, and two ounces of onions in which two cloves should be stuck. Close the net and set it in the pot; after the vegetables have cooked for two hours, remove the net containing the vegetables and continue boiling the soup for two hours longer, making four hours in all. Take off all the fat from the surface and strain the soup either through a silk tammy or a napkin; pour it into another pot to make consomme; and in case it should be needed the following day only, pour it into vessels and set it to cool; the following is an economical way of doing so: set the vessels in a water reservoir supplied continually with cold water from melting ice in the refrigerators and brought through a pipe in the bottom of the tank, have a larger overflow pipe placed near the top so as to allow the water as it heats to flow off.

← No. 193 Clarified Lent Vegetable Consomme Soups & Broths No. 194b Parts of Beef Used for Preparing Bouillons a →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's working stock for the Delmonico's kitchen, scaled for a hotel range. Everything here still holds; the quantities and the vessels are what need translating.

The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep it below a boil -- The text says "comes gradually to a boil" and then "continue boiling," though whether that meant a true rolling boil the page does not say. Modern practice is a bare tremble at the surface: a hard boil emulsifies fat and drives fine protein into suspension, and no amount of straining afterward will give you the clear amber liquid that is the whole point of a bouillon destined for consomme.
ScaleTen quarts of water to eight pounds of meat and bone fills a 12-quart pot to the brim. Halved (5 quarts water, 4 lb meat and bone) it fits an ordinary large stockpot and yields roughly 3 quarts of finished stock after four hours of reduction and straining.
"Chicken legs"These are feet and shanks, scalded so the yellow outer skin peels away, and they are in the pot chiefly for gelatin rather than flavor. Chicken feet are sold in Asian and Latin markets and can sometimes be ordered from a butcher; a couple of split wings will do as a substitute, though with less body.
Two-thirds meatThe instruction to have "at least two-thirds meat" matters more than it looks. This is a broth, not a modern roasted bone stock — shin, chuck and neck give it the savor, and a pot loaded mostly with bone will taste thin and gluey.
Soup celery and parsnip"Soup celery" is celery leaf and the stringy outer stalks, or celeriac trimmings; half an ounce is a small handful. Parsnip at half an ounce is a single thick coin -- a very small amount, and more would push the broth sweet.
Twenty grains of pepperWhole peppercorns, twenty of them, not ground pepper by weight. Added after skimming so they don't get lifted off with the scum.
SaltAn ounce and a quarter to ten quarts is about 2 tablespoons of fine salt — lightly seasoned on purpose, because this liquid goes on to become consommé and sauces and will be reduced further.
The vegetable netCheesecloth tied loosely, or a large stainless mesh basket. It exists so the vegetables can be pulled at the two-hour mark before they go muddy and soft, while the meat carries on. Keep them submerged.
Straining and the ice tankA "silk tammy" is a fine woven straining cloth; damp muslin in a chinois does the same work. The overflow tank at the end is a cold-water bath fed by melt-water from the ice chests, and its purpose is speed -- a stockpot left to cool on its own sits for hours in the range where bacteria multiply. Divide the stock into shallow pans, chill it in an ice-water bath, then refrigerate. The fat cap lifts off cleanly the next morning.

A Little History

This is entry 194a from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous professional record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like what it is: a station recipe from a kitchen that made stock every day and built half its menu on it. The numbered cross-references at the foot of the page — forward to "Parts of Beef Used for Preparing Bouillons" — show the system Ranhofer worked in, where bouillon is not a dish but the first step in a chain that runs through consommé to the sauces. The French term bouillon simply means the boiled liquid, from bouillir, to boil, and by Ranhofer's day it had come to mean specifically the clear unclarified beef broth of the professional kitchen, as distinct from the fortified and egg-clarified consommé it becomes. The closing paragraph on running ice-melt through a cooling tank is the most datable thing on the page: mechanical refrigeration was still uncommon in commercial kitchens, and a chef of Ranhofer's standing was plumbing his own cold-water bath off the ice chests to get gallons of stock down to temperature overnight.