№ 3Sausa zupa

Portable soup (dried broth tablets) Makes about 100–150 g of dried soup, enough for 12–15 cups of broth · 3–5 days, mostly unattended · Adapted from the 1796 recipe; not yet tested.

The book gives 16 mārciņas each of veal and beef, 4 old hens, 1 marrow bone, 2 calf's feet, 20 allspice berries, 8 cloves, 3 blades of mace and 2 bay leaves, boiled down to 3 stopi and then to 1 stops: that is 6.7 kg each of veal and beef, reduced to 3.8 l and then to 1.3 l. We use one sixth.

Ingredients

• 1.1 kg veal shin or knuckle, on the bone
• 1.1 kg beef shin, on the bone
• 1 small boiling fowl (old hen), about 1.2 kg, or 1.2 kg chicken wings and backs
• 1 piece of marrow bone, about 300 g
• ½ calf's foot, split, or 1 pig's trotter, split (our substitution)
• A small piece of dried ginger root, or ½ tsp ground ginger
• 4 allspice berries
• 1–2 cloves
• 1 blade of mace
• 1 small bay leaf
• About 5 l cold water, enough to cover
• Salt, to serve (our addition)

You also need an 8–10 l stockpot, a sieve lined with muslin, a heavy saucepan, a heatproof bowl that sits in a pan of water, a small dish (about 10 × 15 cm) and baking paper.

Method

1. Day 1, the stock (about 7 hours). Put the meat, bones, feet and spices in the stockpot and add cold water just to cover. Bring slowly to the boil and keep skimming off the foam until no more rises. Set the lid slightly ajar and simmer very gently for 6 hours, until the meat falls off the bones. 2. Strain through the muslin-lined sieve and discard the solids; they have given up everything. Cool the stock quickly by standing the pot in cold water, then refrigerate it overnight. 3. Day 2, reducing (5–7 hours). Lift off the solid fat. You should have roughly 2.5–3 l of stock, probably already set to a jelly. Put it in a heavy saucepan with the lid ajar so the steam can escape, and simmer gently. Stir now and then, stirring the skin that forms back in, and wipe the drops of water off the inside of the lid from time to time so they don't fall back. Keep going until only about 200 ml is left (a sixth of the book's 1 stops). This takes 3–5 hours. Lower the heat as it thickens; near the end it scorches easily. 4. Pour the reduced stock into the heatproof bowl, set it in a pan of simmering water and keep it there for 2 hours, stirring often. Top up the water as needed, but never let any get into the bowl. By the end it should be as thick as warm honey and coat the spoon heavily. 5. Line the small dish with baking paper, pour in the soup (about 1 cm deep) and leave it to cool. Chill until firm and rubbery, a few hours or overnight. 6. Day 3 onwards, drying. Turn the slab out and cut it into 2 cm squares, about 10 g each. Lay them on baking paper on a rack in a warm, airy place and turn them once a day until they are hard right through. At room temperature this takes several days; a dehydrator or an oven at 50 °C with the door ajar does it in 6–12 hours. 7. Store the pieces in an airtight tin. To use, pour 250 ml boiling water over one piece and stir until it dissolves. Salt to taste.

Notes

• What the book says vs. what we added: the method is the book's: a long, slow simmer with the scum taken off, straining through horsehair cloth (ašķu drāna), removing the fat, reducing in a pan with a vented lid while wiping off the condensation and stirring in the skin ("the skin on top is its strength"), two hours in a tin vessel standing in boiling water, setting in a porcelain dish and drying on paper in a warm place. The book reduces in two stages, to 3 stopi before straining and then to 1 stops; we strain after the first simmer and do the rest of the reduction in one go. The one-sixth scale, the times, chilling overnight to lift the fat, the dehydrator and the salt are ours. The book adds no salt at all.
• Scaled down: the book's batch used over 13 kg of meat plus four hens. Even at one sixth this needs a big pot. The yield is our estimate.
• Gelatine matters: the calf's feet are what make the soup set and dry hard. If you can't get a calf's foot, use a pig's trotter. If the soup doesn't set firm in step 5, melt it and reduce it further.
• Food safety: cool the stock fast and keep it in the fridge between stages. Dry the pieces completely; any that stay soft or sticky should be kept in the fridge and used within a week. Throw away any piece that shows mould. Well-dried pieces keep for months.
• Context: this is "portable soup", the 18th-century stock cube. The book says the pieces can be carried in a pocket on long journeys and turned back into meat broth with boiling water.