No. 18 — Broth with Salted Cucumbers
An English translation of original recipe No. 18 from Elena Molokhovets’ Russian cookbook (1901), with historical quantities and Russian source.
Make yellow broth No. 1 from beef shank. After three boils skim the scum. Add washed veal breast, trimmings of shaped white roots browned in butter, fried onion, skins and seeds from salted cucumbers and a bunch of herbs. Simmer gently.
When the veal breast becomes tender after 1–1½ hours, put it in cold water for ten minutes, remove, press under a weight and cool. Separately cook carefully shaped celery and parsley roots in strained broth.
A quarter of an hour before serving, add the cucumber flesh, cut lengthwise into quarters and then diagonally. Boil the cucumber brine separately and clarify with egg whites. Strain it through a napkin into a separate vessel so that it may be added according to taste.
Pour the main broth through the coagulated egg whites left on the napkin. Return the shaped roots and veal breast, cut along the bones and then across each bone into two or three portions. Bring once to the boil and pour into a soup tureen over chopped dill.
To provide
1½ Russian pounds of beef shank; 1½–2 Russian pounds of veal breast ¾ Russian pound of celery and parsley roots; 1 onion; a bunch of greens | 6 salted cucumbers; 2–3 egg whites for clarification Cucumber brine to taste, fresh dill and salt |