Bouillon or Meat-Broth

Ingredients

• an ounce of Proust’s extract of beef
• a quart of hot water

Method

1. 1

   Dissolve an ounce of Proust’s extract of beef in a quart of hot water to produce standard bouillon or broth.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The spirit of cookery (1895) by Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum, page 83. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

an ounce of Proust’s extract of beef, or extract of mutton, in a quart of hot water. With this we operate in such a manner that we know the bouillon strength of each dish, as expressed in soluble extract from given weights of beef or mutton. The advantage of such a solution over the best beef-tea made in the exact proportion of 2 lb. of minced beef free from bone, fat and tendon, to just so much water as is necessary for it to yield a quart of boiling product, is evident from the following considerations : Firstly, to produce this best beef-tea, we should have to get and pay for 2 lb. of gravy-beef, free from bone and fat. Is. 4d. to Is. 6d. ; we should then have to mince it very fine, which requires a rotatory mincing-machine, a mincing-board, and a special mincing - knife ; we should then have to mix the mince with a quart of cold water and gradually heat it to boiling ; after ten minutes’ boiling we should have to strain the broth through a cloth or tammy, and either to press or to edul- corate the residue with pure hot water to exhaust it. The broth thus obtained would certainly be good as regards strength, but it would be turbid from fat, glycogen, and suspended albuminous particles, and would be the more decidedly greasy the fatter had been the beef or mutton from which it had been prepared. We should therefore be obliged to perform upon it two operations before we could use it for high-class cooking. We should have to let it get Ii6 THE SPIRIT OF COOHERi cold, and remove the fat from the top, or the bouillon from underneath the fat (the latter would be the quicker process if proper apparatus were employed). Secondly, we would have to clarify the broth by means of dissolving and causing to curdle in it, by heat, a certain quantity of white of egg. This would involve the purchase of the eggs, the heating of the white of the eggs, mixing it with the broth, adding lemon-juice, heating the mixture first to coagulation, next to boiling, and then allowing it to simmer until the separation of albumin and broth be complete. We should then have to filter the broth through a fine napkin. And then, with all this labour and expense, we should be just at the same point as that which we attain immediately by dis- solving an ounce of Proust’s extract in a quart of hot water. A quarter of a pound of the best manufacture of Proust’s extract of meat, or beef, costs 2s., therefore 1 oz. costs 6d. ; this gives a quart of broth certainly equal in value of every description, if not superior, to the quart of broth for which the meat alone costs from Is. 4d. to Is. 6d., and upon which we should have to spend all the trouble, time, and expense (coals, eggs, lemon) described in the foregoing. Our standard broth therefore costs, as regards first outlay, only one-third of its equivalent of gravy-beef ; but when we consider the work and expense of producing first-class broth from beef or mutton directly, we are constrained to say that such broth as elaborated from gravy-beef is at least six times as dear as broth from beef-extract of equal culinary value. In this argument it is assumed that the time of the cook, wear of apparatus, firing, albumin, lemon, and washing of two napkins, may be estimated at Is. fid. Preparation of Stock as commonly understood. Now let us compare with these processes for the prepara- tion of pure genuine bouillon, or meat-extract, the prepara- tion of stock as commonly understood and practised in even BOUILLON, OR MEAT-BROTH

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.