SOUP STOCK.
A great many soups are made without the previous preparation of a specially distinctive stock. But stock has as legitimate an existence in soup making, as ferment has in bread making; and its recognition is quite essential to a perfect understanding of the subject. Stock is the base of soups. It is the fluid foundation with which other materials are mixed, and skillfully incorporated into soups, that in modern bills of fare are bewilderingly designated potages, purees, and consommes.
Soup stock, in the strictest sense of the term, is the fluid extract of meat or meat and bones, and is of two kinds:—simple and compound.
Simple stock is the extract from a single kind of flesh, fish or fowl. Compound stock is the extract from two or more kinds of flesh, fish or fowl mingled and cooked together, or mixed together, after being cooked separately.