Beef Soup
A historical recipe from The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph (1860).
A historical recipe
The Virginia Housewife; Or, Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph (1860). Project Gutenberg eBook #12519.
From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.
Source and licence
From The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph (1860). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #12519 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12519). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.
Read the original Public domain in the USA
What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.
United States. Associated with United States by the book is about Virginian cookery (Cooking -- Virginia); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.
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Ingredients
Method
- Take the hind shin of beef, cut off all the flesh off the leg-bone, which must be taken away entirely, or the soup will be greasy.
- Wash the meat clean and lay it in a pot, sprinkle over it one small table-spoonful of pounded black pepper, and two of salt;
- three onions the size of a hen's egg, cut small, six small carrots scraped and cut up, two small turnips pared and cut into dice;
- pour on three quarts of water, cover the pot close, and keep it gently and steadily boiling five hours, which will leave about three pints of clear soup;
- do not let the pot boil over, but take off the scum carefully, as it rises.
- When it has boiled four hours, put in a small bundle of thyme and parsley, and a pint of celery cut small, or a tea-spoonful of celery seed pounded.
- These latter ingredients would lose their delicate flavour if boiled too much.
- Just before you take it up, brown it in the following manner: put a small table-spoonful of nice brown sugar into an iron skillet, set it on the fire and stir it till it melts and looks very dark, pour into it a ladle full of the soup, a little at a time;
- stirring it all the while.
- Strain this browning and mix it well with the soup;
- take out the bundle of thyme and parsley, put the nicest pieces of meat in your tureen, and pour on the soup and vegetables;
- put in some toasted bread cut in dice, and serve it up.