Soup Stock
1/2 cup carrot 1/2 cup turnip To prepare soup-stock follow these directions: 1 pound bone 1 pound meat 1 quart cold water cup minced onion cup carrot 1 teaspoon salt cup turnip 6 peppercorns 1 teaspoon sweet herbs 1 small bay-leaf 1 sprig parsley 1 piece celery root 4 cloves Cheap cuts of meat, shin, neck, or joints and small scraps of meat, such as the flank end of steak or left-overs and bones of roasts, may be used for soup-stock. Cut the meat into small pieces. For each pound of meat and bone use about 1 pint of water. Put the meat and bone into cold, salted water. Let soak for an hour. Then let simmer gently about 3 hours. During the last hour of cooking add from 1/2 cup to a cup of mixed vegetables for each pound of meat. Mixed herbs and spices may be tied in cheesecloth and added, and left in simmering soup as long as desired. The froth should be skimmed from stock as it rises, if clear soup is desired. When cooking soup stock in a fireless cooker add the vegetables in the beginning. 3 pounds mutton from the neck 2 quarts cold water
A plain bone-and-meat stock of the type every early twentieth-century kitchen ran on. The typography of the original has swallowed the fractions in the ingredient list, so read the paragraph rather than the column.
- The missing fractionsThe list prints "cup minced onion," "cup carrot," "cup turnip" with the fraction dropped in setting, and the same has happened in the body text, which reads "from cup to a cup of mixed vegetables" and was most likely "from 1/2 cup to a cup." On that reading a modest fraction of a cup of each of onion, carrot and turnip, plus the celery root, would fit the whole, but the exact fractions are lost.
- Ratio to rememberOne pint of water per pound of combined meat and bone. That is a much tighter ratio than most modern stock recipes and it is what gives this a stock with body rather than flavoured water.
- Cold water and the hour's soakThis is the hinge. Starting in cold water and letting the meat stand draws soluble protein and flavour out into the liquid before it sets; bringing it rapidly to the boil gives a weaker, cloudier result.
- Simmer, never boilA gentle simmer with the surface barely moving; the book gives no temperature. Hard boiling churns fat and protein through the liquid and clouds the stock in a way skimming will not undo.
- SkimmingSkim the froth as it rises, most of which comes early in the cooking. Do not stir, and do not press the solids at the end if you want it clear.
- SaltA teaspoon per quart at the start is reasonable here, but if you plan to reduce the stock later, salt lightly and correct at the end of the dish it goes into.
- Fireless cookerAn insulated box that held food at heat after it had been brought to the boil on the range. A slow cooker on low is the nearest equivalent, and the instruction still holds: with long unattended cooking, the vegetables go in at the start.
- The trailing line"3 pounds mutton from the neck, 2 quarts cold water" appears to be the opening of the next recipe in the book, caught in the same block of text. It is not part of this stock.
- Cooling and keepingThe book says nothing about storage. Strain, then chill it quickly in a shallow pan or an ice bath rather than leaving the pot on the stove; a deep pot of warm stock sits for hours in the range bacteria like. Three or four days refrigerated, or freeze it.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and given away to policyholders, part of a broad early twentieth-century effort by insurers to promote household health and thrift among their customers — better-fed families made better actuarial sense. That purpose shows plainly here: the recipe leads not with a cut of beef but with cheap shin, neck, joints, scraps and the bones of yesterday's roast. Stock made this way was the foundation of the domestic economy in kitchens without refrigeration, where meat trimmings had to be used within a day or two and nothing that would yield gelatine was thrown out. The fireless cooker mentioned at the end was a genuinely popular appliance of the 1900s-1920s, an insulated chest that finished a dish on stored heat and saved fuel; it is often described as a forerunner of the electric slow cooker, though no direct line of descent between the two is established.