Broth

Broth is a liquid food preparation, typically consisting of water, in which bones, meat, fish, cereal grains, or vegetables have been simmered. Broth is used as a basis for other edible liquids such as soup, gravy, or sauce. It can be eaten alone or with garnish. If other ingredients are used, such as rice, pearl barley or oats, it is then generally called soup.

Commercially prepared liquid broths are available, typically for chicken broth, beef broth, and vegetable broth. Dehydrated meat stock, in the form of tablets, is called a bouillon cube. Industrially produced bouillon cubes were commercialized by Maggi in 1908 and by Oxo in 1910. Using commercially prepared broths allows cooks to save time in the kitchen.

Refining

Broth has been made for many years using the animal bones which, traditionally, are boiled in a cooking pot for long periods to extract the flavor and nutrients. The bones may or may not have meat still on them.

Egg whites may be added during simmering when it is necessary to clarify (i.e., purify, or refine a broth for a cleaner presentation). The egg whites will coagulate, trapping sediment and turbidity into an easily strained mass. Not allowing the original preparation to boil will increase the clarity.

Viktor Ferdinand Brotherus

Viktor Ferdinand Brotherus (28 October 1849, Sund, Åland – 9 February 1929), Finnish botanist who studied the mosses (Bryophyta), best known for authoring the treatment of 'Musci' in Engler and Prantl's Die Naturlichen Pflanzenfamilien.

Personal life

Brotherus was born in Skarpans in Sund, Åland while Finland was under Russian rule. He had 13 brothers and sisters of whom six died young. He took his Candidate of Philosophy degree in 1870 at Imperial Alexander University (later University of Helsinki) and began medical studies but gave them up after getting blood poisoning and became a teacher. He married Aline Mathilde Sandman (born 1853 ), daughter of Jonas Sandman, a Justice in the Court of Appeal, in 1879 at the age of thirty, and had four children. She died in 1894 and he did not remarry. He taught natural history and mathematics at the Swedish girls' school in Vaasa City from 1878 to 1917, carrying on his career as a botanist in parallel. At his funeral, his grand-nephew describes: