Read Is There a Nutmeg in the House? for Free Online Page B

equally apply to pot-liquor, as the fluid from the stock-pot was called.) Pretty soon, I found, as no doubt many have found before and since, that the best way out of the difficulty was to use plain water instead of the missing stock, and to make up for the flavour

    thus lacking – and, incidentally, adding nutritive value and vitamins – with a little of the then very precious butter, olive oil, or milk, an egg or some wine in the case of soups; extra cheese for rice dishes, a larger than usual allowance of flavouring vegetables and herbs, plus wine again, for stews.
    As far as vegetable soups were concerned, the policy paid off handsomely. The taste of vegetable purées unaltered by extraneous flavouring is much truer, cleaner, fresher; they become dishes of considerable delicacy; and how much more satisfactory than that feeble clear soup with a julienne of vegetables floating on the surface.
    So all those quarts of stock advocated in the pre-1914 cookery books had never been necessary as far as flavour or consistency was concerned. And with all the meat consumed in middle-class households at that period, such infinitesimal extra nutritive and stimulative elements as might be contained in a light stock were not needed either. But still, some use had to be made of the quantities of surplus materials in the larders of well-to-do households, and some occupation contrived for the kitchenmaids. Everyone was satisfied that these ‘good nourishing soups’ made with stock-pot liquor also implied thrifty housekeeping.
    There are, obviously, exceptions in which stock, clear and true in flavour, does help to give a little body to a vegetable soup andalso brings out the taste of the main ingredient. Mushrooms are one example of such a vegetable and tomatoes another. The cooking process with these vegetables involves the evaporation of some of the large amount of water they contain and its replacement with a broth. These are good vegetables to use for soups when fresh chicken or meat stock is in the larder. But that doesn’t preclude the making of a delicious and no less valuable mushroom or tomato soup with olive oil and cheese, or butter and milk, instead of stock.
    Braised and stewed meat, poultry and game form another category of dishes which often call either for meat stock for the moistening at the beginning of the cooking or, in French recipes for concentrated meat glaze, for strengthening the body and flavour of the sauce in the final stages of cooking – the moment when in English cookery the liquid, of which there is commonly rather too much, is thickened with flour and coloured with that unique commodity called gravy browning. If the dish has been properly cooked to start with, neither of these operations is essential or even desirable.
    In the case of beef and lamb dishes the meat itself should be sufficiently fat and juicy to supply the necessary body and flavour to the sauce – always supposing that the appropriate flavouring vegetables are included and the meat not drowned. In those made from white meats inclined to be dry or insipid, such as veal or modern battery poultry, a little clear veal or beef broth is undoubtedly a help as regards body, flavour and appearance of the finished dish. If broth or stock is lacking and cannot be made especially (although really it is very little trouble to make a small quantity) and if there is no wine available to help the flavour, then I still prefer water to either cubes or meat extracts, genuine or so called. This goes for the most expensive ones to be bought at luxury grocers as much as for the cheap and widely advertised brands. One and all seem to me to give a flavour both false and ineradicable. But this point is mainly one of taste, and perhaps of habit.
    What does seem certain is that any nutritional and beneficial elements contained in the concentrated meat tablets and extracts as experimented with by cooks and chemists since the early eighteenth century and