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German Veal Broth
Cut up 2 pounds of the knuckle of veal and cook it in 3 quarts water, with 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 clove, salt, pepper, parsley, and thyme. Simmer for 4 hours. Cool, skim, and strain it. To 1 1/2 quarts of this stock add 1/4 pound cooked vermicelli, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a pinch of nutmeg, and the yolk of an egg blended with half a cup of milk.
A classic long-simmered veal stock finished with an egg-and-milk liaison. The finish is where it succeeds or curdles.
- The hinge: the liaisonBeat the yolk with the milk, slacken it with a ladle of the hot broth, then stir it back into the pot off the heat. If the soup returns to a boil the yolk scrambles and the broth turns grainy — hold it below about 180F and serve at once.
- Knuckle of vealThis is the shank, joint and all; the gelatin from the bone is the point of the dish. Butchers often sell it cross-cut as veal osso buco, which works. Ask for it sawn so the marrow is exposed.
- Yield and reductionThe recipe does not give a yield; it simply says to take 1 1/2 quarts of the finished stock. Four hours at a simmer will lose a good deal of the three quarts of water, so keep the lid ajar rather than topping up, and measure before the second stage. Finished, 1 1/2 quarts serves four to six as a first course.
- SkimmingCooling the stock before skimming is deliberate — the fat sets into a disc you can lift off whole. Chilling overnight makes this trivial and also lets you see whether the stock has set to a jelly, which tells you the bone gave up what it should.
- VermicelliThe recipe says 'cooked vermicelli,' so the quarter pound may be the cooked weight rather than the dry; take it as dry only if you want a thicker soup. Either way cook it separately in salted water, drain, and add it to the hot broth so its starch does not cloud the stock. Break it into short lengths for spoon service.
- The clove and the aromaticsOne clove for three quarts is not a misprint — clove dominates veal quickly. Stick it into the peeled onion so it is easy to fish out, and tie the parsley stems and thyme together for the same reason.
- SaltSeason lightly at the start and correct at the end. The broth reduces substantially over four hours, and salt added early concentrates with it.
- LeftoversThe liaison does not reheat. If you expect to keep some back, finish only the portion you are serving and store the plain strained stock, which holds three or four days refrigerated or freezes well.
Adelaide Keen's With a Saucepan Over the Sea (1902) belongs to a wave of turn-of-the-century American books that gathered "foreign" dishes for domestic cooks, arranging them by nation as a kind of culinary tour. The recipe sits comfortably in German and Austrian practice, where light veal broths were common and thin soup noodles or vermicelli a usual garnish — a tradition alongside Rindsuppe and its many pasta and pancake-strip additions. The egg-yolk-and-milk finish is a liaison, a technique the French codified but which also appears in central European cookery for giving a clear broth body and pale colour without flour. Veal knuckle is mostly bone and connective tissue, which is what makes it valuable to a stockpot; recipes like this one assumed a household with a fire going all afternoon and no particular hurry.