To clarify Broth or Gravy.—(No. 252*.)
Put on the broth in a clean stew-pan; break the white and shell of an egg, beat them together, put them into the broth, stir it with a whisk; when it has boiled a few minutes, strain it through a tamis or a napkin.
Obs. A careful cook will seldom have occasion to clarify her broths, &c. if prepared according to the directions given in No. 200.
193-* In culinary technicals, is called FIRST STOCK, or long broth; in the French kitchen, “le grand bouillon.” 193-† A dog was fed on the richest broth, yet could not be kept alive; while another, which had only the meat boiled to a chip (and water), throve very well. This shows the folly of attempting to nourish men by concentrated soups, jellies, &c.—Sinclair, Code of Health, p. 356. If this experiment be accurate, what becomes of the theoretic visions of those who have written about nourishing broths, &c.? The best test of the restorative quality of food, is a small quantity of it satisfying hunger, the strength of the pulse after it, and the length of time which elapses before appetite returns again. According to this rule, we give our verdict in favour of No. 19 or 24. See N.B. to No. 181. This subject is fully discussed in The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life, by Diet, &c. published by G. B. Whittaker, 13 Ave-Maria lane. 194-* Called, in some cookery books, “SECOND STOCK;” in the French kitchen, “jus de bœuf.” 194-† A great deal of care is to be taken to watch the time of putting in the water: if it is poured in too soon, the gravy will not have its true flavour and colour: and if it be let alone till the meat sticks to the pan, it will get a burnt taste. 195-* Truffles, morells, and mushrooms, catchups and wines, &c. are added by those who are for the extreme of haut goût. 195-† The general rule is to put in about a pint of water to a pound of meat, if it only simmers very gently. 195-‡ A tamis is a worsted cloth, sold at the oil shops, made on purpose for straining sauces: the best way for using it is for two people to twist it contrary ways. This is a better way of straining sauce than through a sieve, and refines it much more completely. 197-* By this method, it is said, an ingenious cook long deceived a large family, who were all fond of weak mutton broth. Mushroom gravy, or catchup (No. 439), approaches the nature and flavour of meat gravy, more than any vegetable juice, and is the best substitute for it in maigre soups and extempore sauces, that culinary chemistry has yet produced. 200-* See “L’Art de Cuisinier,” par A. Beauvillier, Paris, 1814, p. 68. “I have learned by experience, that of all the fats that are used for frying, the pot top which is taken from the surface of the broth and stock-pot is by far the best.” 203-* To make pease pottage, double the quantity. Those who often make pease soup should have a mill, and grind the pease just before they dress them; a less quantity will suffice, and the soup will be much sooner made. 204-* If the liquor is very salt, the pease will never boil tender. Therefore, when you make pease soup with the liquor in which salted pork or beef has been boiled, tie up the pease in a cloth, and boil them first for an hour in soft water. 204-† Half a drachm of celery-seed, pounded fine, and put into the soup a quarter of an hour before it is finished, will flavour three quarts. 204-‡ Some put in dried mint rubbed to fine powder; but as every body does not like mint, it is best to send it up on a plate. See pease powder, No. 458, essence of celery, No. 409, and Nos. 457 and 459. 205-* My witty predecessor, Dr. Hunter (see Culina, page 97), says, “If a proper quantity of curry-powder (No. 455) be added to pease soup, a good soup might be made, under the title of curry pease soup. Heliogabalus offered rewards for the discovery of a new dish, and the British Parliament have given notoriety to inventions of much less importance than ‘curry pease soup.’” N.B. Celery, or carrots, or turnips, shredded, or cut in squares (or Scotch barley,—in the latter case the soup must be rather thinner), or cut into bits about an inch long, and boiled separately, and thrown into the tureen when the soup is going to table, will give another agreeable variety, and may be called celery and pease soup. Read Obs. to No. 214 207-* The French call this “soup maigre;” the English acceptation of which is “poor and watery,” and does not at all accord with the French, which is, soups, &c. made without meat: thus, turtle, the richest dish that comes to an English table (if dressed without meat gravy), is a maigre dish. 209-* We copied the following receipt from The Morning Post, Jan. 1820. Winter Soup.—(No. 227.) 210 lbs of beef, fore-quarters, 90 lbs. of legs of beef, 3 bushels of best split pease, 1 bushel of flour, 12 bundles of leeks, 6 bundles of celery, 12 lbs. of salt, 11 lbs. of black pepper. These good ingredients will make 1000 quarts of nourishing and agreeable soup, at an expense (establishment avoided) of little less than 2 1/2d. per quart. Of this, 2600 quarts a day have been delivered during the late inclement weather, and the cessation of ordinary employment, at two stations in the parish of Bermondsey, at one penny per quart, by which 600 families have been daily assisted, and it thankfully received. Such a nourishment and comfort could not have been provided by themselves separately for fourpence a quart, if at all, and reckoning little for their fire, nothing for their time. 211-* Read No. 176. 214-* Some lovers of haut goût fry the tails before they put them into the soup-pot. 216-* Fowls’ or turkeys’ heads make good and cheap soup in the same manner. 218-* To this fine aromatic herb, turtle soup is much indebted for its spicy flavour, and the high esteem it is held in by the good citizens of London, who, I believe, are pretty generally of the same opinion as Dr. Salmon. See his “Household Dictionary and Essay on Cookery,” 8vo. London, 1710, page 34, article ‘Basil.’ “This comforts the heart, expels melancholy, and cleanses the lungs.” See No. 307. “This plant gave the peculiar flavour to the original Fetter-lane sausages.”—Gray’s Supplement to the Pharmacopœia, 8vo. 1821 p. 52. 219-* “Tout le monde sait que tous les ragoûts qui portent le nom de TORTUE, sont d’origine Anglaise.”—Manuel des Amphitryons, 8vo. 1808, p. 229. 219-† Those who do not like the trouble, &c. of making mock turtle, may be supplied with it ready made, in high perfection, at Birch’s, in Cornhill. It is not poisoned with Cayenne pepper, which the turtle and mock turtle soup of most pastry cooks and tavern cooks is, and to that degree, that it acts like a blister on the coats of the stomach. This prevents our mentioning any other maker of this soup, which is often made with cow-heel, or the mere scalp of the calf’s head, instead of the head itself. The following are Mr. Birch’s directions for warming this soup:—Empty the turtle into a broad earthen vessel, to keep cool: when wanted for table, to two quarts of soup add one gill of boiling water or veal broth, put it over a good, clear fire, keeping it gently stirred (that it may not burn); when it has boiled about three minutes, skim it, and put it in the tureen. N.B. The broth or water, and the wine, to be put into the stew-pan before you put in the turtle. 219-‡ The reader may have remarked, that mock turtle and potted beef always come in season together. See Obs. to No. 503*. This gravy meat will make an excellent savoury potted relish, as it will be impregnated with the flavour of the herbs and spice that are boiled with it. 220-* “Many gourmets and gastrologers prefer the copy to the original: we confess that when done as it ought to be, the mock turtle is exceedingly interesting.”—Tabella Cibaria, 1820, p. 30. “Turtles often become emaciated and sickly before they reach this country, in which case the soup would be incomparably improved by leaving out the turtle, and substituting a good calf’s head.”—Supplement to Encyc. Brit. Edinburgh, vol. iv. p. 331. [Very fine fat turtles are brought to New-York from the West Indies; and, during the warm weather, kept in crawls till wanted: of these they make soup, which surpasses any mock turtle ever made. A.] 222-* Mullaga-tawny signifies pepper water. The progress of inexperienced peripatetic palaticians has lately been arrested by these outlandish words being pasted on the windows of our coffee-houses. It has, we believe, answered the “restaurateur’s” purpose, and often excited John Bull to walk in and taste: the more familiar name of curry soup would, perhaps, not have had sufficient of the charms of novelty to seduce him from his much-loved mock turtle. It is a fashionable soup, and a great favourite with our East Indian friends, and we give the best receipt we could procure for it. 223-* “The usual allowance at a turtle feast is six pounds live weight per head: at the Spanish dinner, at the City of London Tavern, in August, 1808, 400 guests attended, and 2500 pounds of turtle were consumed.”—See Bell’s Weekly Messenger for August 7th, 1808. Epicure Quin used to say, it was “not safe to sit down to a turtle feast at one of the City Halls, without a basket-hilted knife and fork.” We recommend our friends, before encountering such a temptation, to read our peptic precepts. Nothing is more difficult of digestion, or oftener requires the aid of peristaltic persuaders, than the glutinous callipash which is considered the “bonne bouche” of this soup. Turtle is generally spoiled by being over-dressed. [In Philadelphia, an excellent turtle soup is made of a small native tortoise, called a terrapin, and the article terrapin soup. A.] 223-† “A pound of meat contains about an ounce of gelatinous matter; it thence follows, that 1500 pounds of the same meat, which is the whole weight of a bullock, would give only 94 pounds, which might be easily contained in an earthen jar.”—Dr. Hutton’s Rational Recreations, vol. iv. p. 194. In what degree portable or other soup be nutritious, we know not, but refer the reader to our note under No. 185. 223-‡ This machine was invented by Dr. Denys Papin, F.R.S., about the year 1631, as appears by his essay on “The New Digester, or Engine for Softening Bones;” “by the help of which (he says) the oldest and hardest cow-beef may be made as tender and as savoury as young and choice meat.” Although we have not yet found that they do what Dr. Papin says, “make old and tough meat young and tender,” they are, however, excellent things to make broths and soups in. Among a multitude of other admirable excellencies obtainable by his digester, Dr. Papin, in his 9th chapter, page 54, on the profit that a good engine may come to, says, “I have found that an old hat, very bad and loosely made, having imbibed the jelly of bones became very firm and stiff.”
GRAVIES AND SAUCES.
Melted Butter,
Is so simple and easy to prepare, that it is a matter of general surprise, that what is done so often in every English kitchen, is so seldom done right: foreigners may well say, that although we have only one sauce for vegetables, fish, flesh, fowl, &c. we hardly ever make that good.
It is spoiled nine times out of ten, more from idleness than from ignorance, and rather because the cook won’t than because she can’t do it; which can only be the case when housekeepers will not allow butter to do it with.
Good melted butter cannot be made with mere flour and water; there must be a full and proper proportion of butter. As it must be always on the table, and is the foundation of almost all our English sauces, we have,
Melted butter and oysters, —— —— —— parsley, —— —— —— anchovies, —— —— —— eggs, —— —— —— shrimps, —— —— —— lobsters, —— —— —— capers, &c. &c. &c.
I have tried every way of making it; and I trust, at last, that I have written a receipt, which, if the cook will carefully observe, she will constantly succeed in giving satisfaction.
In the quantities of the various sauces I have ordered, I have had in view the providing for a family of half-a-dozen moderate people.
Never pour sauce over meat, or even put it into the dish,[228] however well made, some of the company may have an antipathy to it; tastes are as different as faces: moreover, if it is sent up separate in a boat, it will keep hot longer, and what is left may be put by for another time, or used for another purpose.
Lastly. Observe, that in ordering the proportions of meat, butter, wine, spice, &c. in the following receipts, the proper quantity is set down, and that a less quantity will not do; and in some instances those palates which have been used to the extreme of piquance, will require additional excitement.228-* If we have erred, it has been on the right side, from an anxious wish to combine economy with elegance, and the wholesome with the toothsome.
Melted Butter.
Keep a pint stew-pan228-† for this purpose only.
Cut two ounces of butter into little bits, that it may melt more easily, and mix more readily; put it into the stew-pan with a large tea-spoonful (i. e. about three drachms) of flour, (some prefer arrow-root, or potato starch, No. 448), and two table-spoonfuls of milk.
When thoroughly mixed, add six table-spoonfuls of water; hold it over the fire, and shake it round every minute (all the while the same way), till it just begins to simmer; then let it stand quietly and boil up. It should be of the thickness of good cream.
N.B. Two table-spoonfuls of No. 439, instead of the milk, will make as good mushroom sauce as need be, and is a superlative accompaniment to either fish, flesh, or fowl.
Obs. This is the best way of preparing melted butter; milk mixes with the butter much more easily and more intimately than water alone can be made to do. This is of proper thickness to be mixed at table with flavouring essences,[229] anchovy, mushroom, or cavice, &c. If made merely to pour over vegetables, add a little more milk to it.
N.B. If the butter oils, put a spoonful of cold water to it, and stir it with a spoon; if it is very much oiled, it must be poured backwards and forwards from the stew-pan to the sauce-boat till it is right again.
Mem. Melted butter made to be mixed with flavouring essences, catchups, &c. should be of the thickness of light batter, that it may adhere to the fish, &c.