Host and Guest

CHAPTER VI.
ON SOUPS AND BROTHS.

At every great dinner—indeed I may say at every dinner of the least pretension in the most civilised countries—you begin by eating soup. Often in Paris and at Brussels, between September and April, at dinners at restaurants, you also commence by half a dozen, a dozen, or eighteen oysters by way of appetiser; but this practice is not resorted to at formal dinners, or, as the French say, diners d’apparat, in private houses; though if three or four intimate friends are dining together sans façon, oysters may be, and often are, introduced before the soup. In Russia the custom is to take caviare, or a slice of raw or pickled herring before soup, which relish is followed by a glass of Cognac or some liqueur. But these are customs not likely to be introduced into more civilized countries; customs, moreover, quite repugnant to English habits.

The basis of nearly every soup is a stock or broth called by the French a grand bouillon. The best way of making this stock is by boiling, or rather stewing down a sufficient quantity of properly prepared and washed beef in a marmite, or iron or earthen pot, or stewpan. The water must be judiciously apportioned to the quantity of meat. The French, who make the best bouillon in the world, generally pour a quart of water, on half a kilogramme (equivalent to about a pound) of meat, and let it simmer from five-and-a-half to six hours. When the liquid is sufficiently diminished to receive the vegetables, a few young carrots, an onion with a couple of cloves stuck in it, a parsnip, a little celery and a bunch of thyme and parsley are added. The water should be cold, and seasoned with a little salt. The pot or earthen vessel should be placed on a clear fire, and allowed to remain till the liquid is diminished a third. This bouillon is the basis of most soups, and it is called a consommé when a large fowl or the half of a turkey is added. Some cooks use old partridges or pigeons instead of fowls. It is an axiom in cookery, however, that at least two sorts of meat are necessary to make a good bouillon. When the bouillon is skimmed it serves as the stock for all kinds of soup. It cannot be too often stated that the basis of all soup, and indeed of all broth, except mutton, should be juicy young beef and pure soft water. It should be remembered that the trimmings and the bones of fresh meat, the necks of poultry, the liquor in which a joint has been boiled, and the shank-bones of mutton, are excellent additions to the stock-pot, and should be reserved for it. As soup is the food of childhood and old age, it should be restorative and nourishing. The great defect of English soups is, not the want of meat, but the want of a proper boiling or concoction. This radical fault is vilely but vainly attempted to be supplied by the excessive use of seasoning and herbs. The following elementary rules for making nourishing broth, are from the French of Parmentier:—

Great care should be taken to have all the utensils clean. Pots, saucepans, and stewpans, should be well tinned, especially for soups and gravies, as they are obliged to remain a long time upon the fire. Whatever is boiled in a brass or copper pot, should be taken out while it is hot; if left to cool, it would have a disagreeable taste, and be very unwholesome. As a convincing proof of this, if the liquor that any kind of meat is boiled in remains in the pot till the next day, the fat at the top will be quite green, and the liquor of course very pernicious. Iron pots, saucepans, &c., are the most wholesome, but they spoil the colour of many articles of cookery, and therefore are not much used; but they are useful for anything that would not be discoloured. Pots lined with earthenware are certainly preferable to any other kind, but they are very expensive.

The broth to be used for soups and gravies should be kept separate; because the broth of the stock-pot, being required for white as well as brown sauces, should not be coloured; whilst that for soups, unless they be white soups, should always be made brown. If, however, you have more coloured broth than you require for soup, you may apply it to making brown gravies.

An excellent stock-pot may be produced with all the bones you can collect, carcasses, and the under or claw-legs of poultry or game—all bones and parings, in short, of flesh and fowl. Put them into a large pipkin with water; or if you have the liquor in which beef, or mutton, or veal, has been boiled, use it in preference. To this you may add, if you have it, a few ladlefuls of the water in which a ham has been boiled, first skimming off the fat. With the bones, put a bunch of leeks, a bunch of green celery, an onion with three cloves stuck into it, a couple of carrots, a turnip, a bit of parsnip, some salt, a bunch of herbs, and two or three sheep’s melts. A small quantity of sugar will also greatly improve the flavour of stock, and indeed of all rich soups. Let the whole stew simmer very slowly during seven or eight hours, keeping it closely covered all the while. Season it with a little salt. When reduced to a good consommée, and you are satisfied with its flavour, strain it through a sieve, and put it by for use.

This broth, if required, may be used for making white soups.

All soups should be closely covered during their boiling, by which the heat will be very much economised. There may be, however, occasionally some deviations from this course, which must depend upon the discretion of the cook. In making soups and broths, stale as well as fat meat should be avoided; the first will impart an ill taste, and the last will be attended with considerable waste.

Of the kinds that will keep are brown soup, hare soup, soup of game of any kind, giblet soup, and generally all soups made of the meat of animals of mature growth. Soups into which vegetables and young meats enter in any quantity, are best when fresh made, as these things have a strong tendency to ferment. This also applies to veal and fish soups. This tendency may be partly checked by boiling them up, or changing the vessels.

The best meat soups are, beyond question, those which are made from the lean alone, without much, if any, fat.

In making pea-soup with dry peas, soft water should be used; with green peas, hard water, which contributes to the preservation of their colour.

A soup should never be permitted to grow cold in the vessel in which it has been boiled. If not immediately wanted, it should be poured out into a clean pan; one made of stoneware is the best, as neither salts nor acids will act upon it, a consideration of essential importance. While cooling, the soup should not be covered over; nor indeed is it desirable to cover soup after it is cold, except with a hair sieve. It facilitates the operation, if meat for soup or gravy be cut into pieces of about half a pound each, and improves both the flavour and colour, if the meat, onions, and carrots be stewed at the bottom of the soup-pot or digester, before the water is added to it, with a bit of butter to prevent burning.

To this previous drawing out of the juices without much or any water, much of the superiority of French soups is to be attributed. Some French cooks, to regulate the flavour of soups more exactly, boil the roots, herbs, and vegetables separately to a mash, and then squeeze them and add the juice till the desired flavour is obtained.

As long boiling is necessary to make good soup, particularly where the whole or the greater part of the virtues of butchers’ meat are to be extracted, it will be necessary to add more water from time to time as it boils away; and, in order to save time, it will be best to add the water boiling, or, at least, very hot to the soup. In the addition of herbs, other vegetables, or condiments, care should be taken that they are in such quantities that no one may predominate, unless, as is sometimes the case with celery or onion, it is desired that there should be a predominancy of a particular flavour.

As celery is so generally used to flavour soups, the cook should know that, when the root is scarce, the seeds bruised and added to the soup a few minutes only before it is served up, will flavour it well; indeed the seeds will be generally found superior to the root for the purpose of flavouring. Boiling the seeds, however, for a long time, will dissipate their essential oil on which their flavour chiefly depends. This observation applies with equal force to all spices, the long boiling of which, in open vessels, must necessarily dissipate their oils in which their good qualities reside: indeed, sometimes a few drops of their essential oil, as of cinnamon or cassia, will supply the place of the spice itself.

The boiling of poultry and game in the stock-pot is a practice very common abroad. When stewed enough to be tender, they should be served immediately with a good sauce.

In regard to broths, some of the general directions concerning boiling must be carefully attended to, as well as the preceding observations on the preparation of soups. Broth may be made from the coarsest pieces of meat, and of any strength, by adapting the water to the quantity of meat, and by sufficient simmering. To make the broth good the meat should always be simmered till it is tender, and will separate without difficulty from the bones. In every case, as well of broth as of soup, in order to obtain them with the least boiling, and consequently most economically, the meat should be cut into small pieces, the bones, if large, broken, and the joints, such as those in a neck of mutton, separated, unless the meat be wanted to be served up with the broth or otherwise as a whole joint.

Broth, I may safely say, is the essence and foundation of all cookery. Among our neighbours, the French, the broth-pot, or pot-au-feu, may be said to be the substratum of the cookery of the middle and working classes. To them it yields a substantial nourishment. Any parings or trimmings of meat will serve to make the first broth, provided the scum and fat be carefully removed. If this be not sedulously attended to, the broth will be too highly coloured to mix with the sauce. Those, therefore, who are charged with the stock-pots should skim them slowly over a gentle fire, adding at intervals a little cold water, that the scum may rise more copiously. Broth should always be in the larder of a good kitchen, as it is perpetually required for sauces, braises, soups, consommés, and essences.

The great English soups are, real turtle, mock turtle, ox-tail, gravy, giblet, hare, green-pea soup, and pea soup. The great English broths are, chicken broth, mutton broth, Scotch-barley broth, veal broth, and beef broth or tea, which is almost equivalent to the French grand bouillon.

Real turtle soup is seldom made in private houses, unless of the very highest distinction. It is generally obtained ready prepared from the Waterloo Hotel at Liverpool, and from some of the great taverns in the City in Bishopsgate or Aldersgate Street, or from Gunter’s at the West end, who has jars ready prepared, from the West Indies and Brazil. Twenty-five years ago a great deal of turtle used to come to London prepared by Weeks, of the Bush Hotel,[11] Bristol. But Bristol then, and antecedently, stood at the head of the West-India trade, and there were those who preferred the Bristol-made turtle to that of Birch, Bleaden, or Kay. But the Bush Hotel no longer exists, and London now bears off the bell for its turtle soup, as well as for its calipash and calipee.

Turtle generally arrives in this country about the latter end of May or the beginning of June, though, from the uncertainties of a sea voyage, no exact period for its first appearance can be fixed. In the year 1814 it was so unusually late, that at the banquet given in Guildhall to the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, on the 18th of June, there was no turtle to be had. The weight of a turtle varies from 30 lbs. to 500 lbs. or 600 lbs., and the price from 2s. 6d. to 5s. per pound. The cooking of a turtle is generally performed by a professed artist, whose fee is from one to two guineas. Some epicures prefer the turtle cut into steaks and broiled, to be eaten with melted butter, Cayenne pepper, and the juice of a Seville orange. They say the flesh thus quickly dressed retains most flavour.

This soup is, says Carème, the most lengthened in its details of any that are known; “the composition of its seasoning claims an able hand and a strong memory: the palate of the cook who executes it should be very fine; none of the ingredients should predominate, not even the Cayenne or allspice, which the English cook inconsiderately employs.”

The great artist divides the dressing of a turtle into four operations, and on each expends a page. In order to dress the turtle as it ought to be prepared, he says, two large legs of veal, eight fowls, lean ham in slices, sweet herbs, beef stock, the nut of a ham, cloves, Cayenne, allspice, mace, long pepper, white pepper, eight bottles of dry Madeira, and sixty eggs, are necessary. It is therefore clearly better for those who wish to give turtle soup at a dinner, to have a quart or gallon of it from some first-rate hotel, than to go to the expense of all these ingredients.

Gravy, ox-tail, mock turtle, and giblet soups are much more common at English dinners than real turtle soup, for the two sufficient reasons, that they are more easily prepared, and that they are less costly. Ox-tail, mock turtle, hare, and giblet soups are still made in the fashion in which they were at the beginning of the present century. Calf-tail soup is simply made by substituting pieces of calf-tail for ox-tail. It is much more delicate than ox-tail, and very nutritious.

The stocks for white soups are made of veal, mutton, fowl, rabbit, chicken, ox-feet, calf’s head and feet, with bacon and ham. In drawing these stocks, a bit of ham, ham-bone, or lean bacon, is used with the usual seasoning. Fish may be used in thickening meat white soups; they give a turtleish lightness and flavour. Eggs make an excellent thickening for the poorer kinds; but the richer or more delicate, are thickened with almonds and artificial or real cream. Though the stocks be properly made and well-seasoned, the thickening and finishing, nevertheless, require great care.

As to French soups, their name is legion. There is scarcely a complete French treatise on the art of cookery that does not contain receipts for at least 150 soups; but those most used at English dinner-tables are, the purée à la Reine, the purée des carottes au riz, the purée de lapins, à la Chantilly, à la Colbert, à la Dauphine, the potage à la brunoise aux pointes d’asperges, à la paysanne, the à la Julienne, and à la jardinière. There are also the bisques d’écrevisse, de crabe, de chevrettes, &c. But for all these soups the aid of a really accomplished cook is necessary. Italian soups are generally of macaroni, semolina, or of rice; but these, whether à la Medicis or à la Corinne, are much better prepared after the French than after Italian receipts. No human being who had any taste in cookery would think of giving the German soup made of green rye, or the soup of poached eggs after the Styrian fashion; and Russian and Polish soups are not suitable to English stomachs. The Russian cabbage soup may suit a people who love train oil (which Theodore Hook used to say was “bad for the liver, but good for the lights”), but assuredly it would be rejected by any civilized Englishman.

I have said in another place that the Dutch eel soup, and the soup of herring-roes, is very relishing.

To sum up, a host in England can never go wrong in ordering in the winter months for his guests an ox-tail, a mock turtle, a calf-tail, a giblet or mulligatawney from among English soups; or a brunoise or purée de gelinotte, a Julienne, or a purée à la Reine if he requires a French soup. For the spring and summer, English spring soup may be given with turtle, green pea, a soup à la Condé, or à purée de navets, or à consommé à la Xavier.