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Broth or Soup Stock
(Brodo) To obtain good broth the meat must be put in cold water, and then allowed to boil slowly. Add to the meat some pieces of bones and "soup greens" as, for instance, celery, carrots and parsley. To give a brown color to the broth, some sugar, first browned at the fire, then diluted in cold water, may be added.
While it is not considered that the broth has much nutritive power, it is excellent to promote the digestion. Nearly all the Italian soups are made on a basis of broth.
A good recipe for substantial broth to be used for invalids is the following: Cut some beef in thin slices and place them in a large saucepan; add some salt. Pour cold water upon them, so that they are entirely covered. Cover the saucepan so that it is hermetically closed and place on the cover a receptacle containing water, which must be constantly renewed. Keep on a low fire for six hours, then on a strong fire for ten minutes. Strain the liquid in cheese cloth. The soup stock, besides being used for soups, is a necessary ingredient in hundreds of Italian dishes. 2 SOUP OF "CAPPELLETTI" This Soup is called of "Cappelletti" or "little hats" on account of the shape of the "Cappelletti.". First a thin sheet of paste is made according to the following directions:
The best and most tender paste is made simply of eggs, flour and salt, water may be substituted for part of the eggs, for economy, or when a less rich paste is needed. Allow about a cup of flour to an egg. Put the flour on a bread board, make a hollow in the middle and break in the egg.
Use any extra whites that are on hand. Knead it thoroughly, adding more flour if necessary, until you have a paste you can roll out. Roll it as thin as an eighth of an inch. A long rolling pin is necessary, but any stick, well scrubbed and sand papered, will serve in lieu of the long Italian rolling pin.
Cut from this sheet of paste rounds measuring about three inches in diameter. In the middle of each circle place a spoonful of filling that must be made beforehand, composed of cooked meat (chicken, pork or veal) ground very fine and seasoned with grated cheese, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, allspice, salt. The ground meat is to be mixed with an equal amount of curds or cottage cheese. When the filling is placed in the circle of paste, fold the latter over and moisten the edge of the paste with the finger dipped in water to make it stay securely closed.
These cappelletti should be cooked in chicken or beef broth until the paste is tender, and served with this broth as a soup. 3
Two recipes run together here: a general household broth, and the filled pasta that is its most famous vehicle. The broth is straightforward; the pasta quantities need adjusting to modern flour and modern taste.
- Cold water, slow boilThe instruction to start meat in cold water and bring it up slowly is the hinge of the whole thing. It draws soluble protein and gelatin out into the liquid; dropping the meat into water already hot sets the surface proteins quickly and gives you better boiled beef but weaker broth. Keep it at a bare shiver, around 180-190F, and skim the grey foam for the first twenty minutes or the broth will cloud.
- "Soup greens"Celery, carrot and parsley, with an onion if you have one. Add them in the last hour or two rather than at the start; four hours of boiling reduces them to sweetish mush and pulls a slightly stale vegetable flavour into the pot.
- The browned sugarThis is caramel colouring, made by melting sugar in a dry pan until it is dark mahogany and just short of bitter, then letting it down with cold water. It stands well back from the pan when you add the water, which will spit. A tablespoon of the syrup is enough for several quarts; more and the broth turns sweet.
- The invalid broth is a double boilerThe invalid broth is a slow, sealed extraction -- "Hermetically closed" with a vessel of water renewed on the lid keeps the lid cold so steam condenses back into the pan and the contents stay below the boil. A tightly lidded heavy pot in a very low oven will approximate it, though the book gives no oven and no temperature. The ten minutes on a strong fire at the end presumably brings the accumulated juices up to a full heat before straining.
- Skimming the fatNeither recipe mentions it. Chill the strained broth overnight and lift the solidified fat off in a sheet; save it for frying. Broth used for cappelletti should be nearly fat-free or the surface goes greasy.
- A cup of flour to an egg is too muchA cup of flour to an egg is on the generous side -- flour absorbency varies, and this ratio will give a stiff dough. Start at about 3/4 cup (100g) flour per large egg and work more in only if the dough is sticky. Rest the kneaded dough, covered, for half an hour before rolling or it will fight the pin.
- Roll thinner than it saysAn eighth of an inch is a workable thickness for a cut noodle but heavy for filled pasta, where two layers meet at the seal. Roll to something closer to 1/16 inch, thin enough to see your hand through, and cut rounds of about two inches rather than three; three-inch cappelletti are dumplings.
- Curds means ricottaCurds probably means ricotta -- the "curds or cottage cheese" mixed with the meat most likely stands in for fresh ricotta, which is what the Italian original would use. Whole-milk ricotta drained in a sieve for an hour works best; supermarket cottage cheese carries too much water and will loosen the filling. The grated cheese is most likely Parmigiano, though the book does not say.
- Cooking the cappelletti"Until the paste is tender" is three to five minutes in simmering broth for fresh pasta, a minute or two more if the seal is thick. Cook them in a wide pan of broth in batches so they do not stick, and count on 20-25 pieces per person as a first course.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written for American households, and its opening on brodo reflects how Italian cooking actually organises itself: stock is not a specialty item but the base from which most of the soup chapter, and a good deal of the rest, proceeds. The passage on broth for invalids belongs to a genre that filled nineteenth-century cookbooks on both sides of the Atlantic — beef tea, essence of beef, restorative jellies — built on the then-current belief that meat juices carried concentrated nourishment, a belief the author quietly hedges when she notes that broth is not considered to have much nutritive power. Cappelletti, "little hats," are generally traced to Romagna and the region around Bologna, where they are traditionally eaten in brodo at Christmas; the filling of minced meat and fresh cheese scented with nutmeg and lemon peel is close to what Pellegrino Artusi recorded in his 1891 La scienza in cucina.