Veal Soup
Boil four or five pounds of the shoulder or shank of veal; when half done add salt; when tender remove the meat; shred a teacupful and put back in the soup. Add two sliced potatoes, one very small onion, one tablespoonful rice, parsley and butter, and more salt if needed, and pepper.
A plain veal broth thickened only by a spoonful of rice and two sliced potatoes. The recipe assumes you know the water quantity and the cooking time, so both need supplying.
- WaterNothing is specified. For 4-5 lb of shoulder or shank, cover by about an inch and a half — roughly 3 to 4 quarts — and expect to lose a quart to evaporation. Top up with boiling water rather than cold if the meat is left exposed.
- "Boil" means simmerA hard boil clouds the broth and toughens the meat. Bring it to the boil, skim the grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes, then hold it at a bare tremble.
- TimingVeal shank needs roughly 2½ to 3 hours to reach falling-apart tenderness; boneless shoulder is closer to 2. "Half done" for salting is therefore about an hour and a quarter in. Period cookery books often held back salt in the belief it firmed the meat; the effect is disputed, and salting earlier does no harm here.
- A teacupfulUsually reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz, less than a US measuring cup; call it ½ to ¾ cup of shredded meat going back into the pot. The remainder of the 4-5 lb is left over, and would most likely have been kept for another meal.
- Cut of meatShank is the better choice — the marrow and connective tissue give the body this soup otherwise lacks. Ask for it cross-cut; a supermarket veal shank sold whole can be sawn in two.
- Rice and potatoesOne tablespoon of rice in three quarts is seasoning, not starch. Add the rice and potato with about 25 minutes to go so the potato slices hold their shape rather than dissolving.
- Butter and parsleyQuantities are left open. A tablespoon of butter stirred in at the end and a generous handful of chopped parsley off the heat suits this volume; parsley boiled long goes drab and bitter.
- YieldAbout 2½ to 3 quarts of finished soup, six to eight servings, plus the reserved cooked veal — good in a hash, a pie or a salad.
Veal is often said to have been a mainstay of American soup-making in the era of this recipe: mild, and rich in the gelatin that a stockpot depends on, and it appears in cookbooks of the period more readily than it seems to now. The method here is frankly economical — the pot yields a clear broth, a modest garnished soup, and several pounds of boiled meat for later use, all from one fire. That double return may be what lies behind the odd instruction to shred only a teacupful of the veal back into the liquid. American veal consumption fell sharply through the twentieth century, a decline generally traced to calves becoming more valuable raised to beef weight and to later objections to confinement rearing, which is why a recipe like this reads as unfamiliar today despite being a plain household staple when the book was printed.