Two pounds of bones (beef, veal, or mutton) cracked in several places.
Half an onion chopped.
Two or three stalks of celery, when you can get it.
Five quarts of cold water.
Meat and bones should be raw, but if you have bones left from underdone beef or mutton, you may crack and add them. Put all the ingredients (no salt or pepper) in a large clean pot, cover it closely and set at one side of the range where it will not get really hot under two hours. This gives the water time to draw out the juices of the meat. Then remove to a warmer place, stir up well from the bottom, and cook slowly five hours longer.
It should never boil hard, but “bubble-bubble” softly and steadily all the while. Fast boiling toughens the fibres and keeps in the juice of the meat which should form the body of the soup. When the time is up, lift the pot from the fire, throw in a heaping tablespoonful of salt, and a teaspoonful of pepper, and pour out into your “stock-pot.” This should be a stout stone crock or jar, with a cover, and be used for nothing else.
See that it is free from grease, dust and all smell, scald out with hot water and soda, then with clean boiling water just before pouring in the soup, or the hot liquid may crack it.
Put on the cover and set in a cold place until next day.
Then take off every particle of the caked fat from the top. You can use this as dripping for frying. Soup that has globules of grease floating on the surface is unwholesome and slovenly.
Strain the skimmed liquid through a colander, squeezing the meat hard to extract every drop of nutriment. Throw away the tasteless fibres and bones when you have wrung them dry.