Boil a large fowl in three quarts of water until tender (the water should never more than bubble). Skim off the fat, and add a teacupful of rice, and, also, a slice of carrot, one of turnip, a small piece of celery and an onion, which have been cooked slowly for fifteen minutes in two large table-spoonfuls of butter. Skim this butter carefully from the vegetables, and into the pan in which it is, stir a table- spoonful of flour. Cook until smooth, but not brown. Add this, as well as a small piece of cinnamon and of mace, and four whole cloves. Cook all together slowly for two hours. Chop and pound the breast of the fowl very fine. Rub the soup through a fine sieve; add the pounded breast and again rub the whole through the sieve. Put back on the fire and add one and a half table-spoonfuls of salt, a fourth of a teaspoonful of pepper and a pint of cream, which has come just to a boil. Boil up once and serve. This is a delicious soup.
Take a white cabbage and slice it up, and throw it into some stock or water, with some leeks and slices of turnip. Boil the whole till the vegetables are tender, flavour with pepper and salt. This is sometimes called Cornish broth, though in Cornwall a piece of meat or bones are generally boiled with the vegetables. As no meat, of course, is used, too much water must not be added, but only sufficient liquor must be served to make the vegetables thoroughly moist. Perhaps the consistency can best be described by saying that there should be equal quantities of vegetables and fluid.
Peel, wash, and slice up the potatoes and onions and put them into a saucepan with the butter, and stir them about till all the butter is dissolved and worked into the potatoes, but they must not get brown. Pour over the boiling water and boil until they are of a pulp, then rub them through a sieve, return to the saucepan, add the milk and seasoning, and stir till it boils. Pour into a hot tureen, and serve with fried bread.
Twenty-five small clams, one quart of milk, half a cupful of butter, one table-spoonful of chopped parsley, three potatoes, two large table-spoonfuls of flour, salt, pepper. The clams should be chopped fine end put into a colander to drain. Pare the potatoes, and chop rather fine. Put them on to boil with the milk, in a double kettle. Rub the butter and flour together until perfectly creamy, and when the milk and potatoes have been boiling fifteen minutes, stir this in, and cook eight minutes more. Add the parsley, pepper and salt, and cook three minutes longer. Now add the clams. Cook one minute longer, and serve. This gives a very delicate soup, as the liquor from the clams is not used. Fish Chowder. Five pounds of any kind of fish, (the light salt-water fish is the best), half a pound of pork, two large onions, one quart of sliced potatoes, one quart of water, one pint of milk, two table-spoonfuls of flour, six crackers, salt, pepper. Skin the fish, and cut all the flesh from the bones. Put the bones onto cook in the quart of water, and simmer gently ten minutes. Fry the pork; then add the onions, cut into slices. Cover, and cook five minutes; then add the flour, and cook eight minutes longer, stirring often. Strain on this the water in which the fish bones were cooked and boil gently for five minutes; then strain all on the potatoes and fish. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer fifteen minutes. Add the milk and the crackers, which were first soaked for three minutes, in the milk. Let it boil up once, and serve. The milk maybe omitted, and a pint of tomatoes used, if you like.
Break open a good-sized cocoanut and grate sufficient of the white part till it weighs half a pound. Boil this in some stock, and after it has boiled for about an hour strain it off. Only a small quantity of stock must be used, and the cocoanut should be pressed and squeezed, so as to extract all the goodness. Add a little pepper and salt, and about half a grated nutmeg. Next boil separately three pints of milk, and add this to the strained soup. Thicken the soup with some ground rice, and serve. Of course, a little cream would be a great improvement. Serve with toasted or fried bread.
Light-coloured and dry cheese is necessary for this somewhat peculiar soup, but the best cheese of all is, undoubtedly, Gruyere. Grate half a pound of cheese and spread a layer of this at the bottom of the soup-tureen. Cover this layer of cheese with some very thin slices of stale crumb of bread. Then put another layer of cheese and another layer of bread till all the cheese is used up. Next take about two tablespoonfuls of brown roux, melt this in a small saucepan, and add two tablespoonfuls of chopped onion. Let the onion cook in the melted roux over the fire, and then add a quart of water, and stir it all up till it boils, adding pepper and salt and a few drops of Parisian essence (burnt sugar) to give it a dark brown colour. Now pour the boiling soup over the contents of the soup-tureen, and let it stand a few minutes so that the bread has time to soak, and serve.
Cut a knuckle of veal, or a neck of mutton into small pieces, and put them, with the bones broken up, into a large stew-pan. Add the meat sliced from a hock or shank of ham, a quarter of a pound of butter, two large onions sliced, a bunch of sweet herbs, and a head of celery cut small. Cover the pan closely, and set it without any water over a slow fire for an hour or more, to extract the essence from the meat. Then skim it well, and pour in four quarts of boiling water, and let it boil gently till all the meat is reduced to rags. Strain it, set it again on the fire, and add a quarter of a pound of vermicelli, which has first been scalded in boiling water. Season it to your taste with salt and cayenne pepper, and let it boil five minutes. Lay a large slice of bread in the bottom of your tureen, and pour the soup upon it. For the veal or mutton you may substitute a pair of large fowls cut into pieces; always adding the ham or a few slices of bacon, without which it will be insipid. Old fowls that are fit for no other purpose will do very well for soup.
Prepare half a dozen parsnips, and boil them with an onion and half a head of celery in some stock till they are quite tender. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, boil it up again, and serve. Sufficient parsnips must be boiled to make the soup as thick as pea soup, so the quantity of stock must be regulated accordingly. This soup is generally rather sweet, owing to the parsnips, and an extra quantity of salt must be added in consequence, as well as pepper. In Belgium and Germany this sweetness is corrected by the addition of vinegar. This, of course, is a matter of taste.
Soak the haricot beans for an hour or two, then put them into a saucepan with the stock or water, the onions, and 1 dozen white peppercorns; boil for four hours and then rub through a sieve, return to the saucepan with the milk and seasoning of pepper and salt, stir until it boils. It is then ready to serve. An ounce of butter stirred in just before it is finished is a great improvement.
This is one of the most nourishing soups that can be made. It is an excellent food for outdoor workers. When butter is dear, sweat the haricots in 1 oz. of beef dripping.
Slice up the onions and carrot, and fry them in the butter with the peppercorns and sugar. Sprinkle over the flour and mix well together. Cut up the tomatoes and put them in, then pour over the boiling stock and stir until it boils. Simmer slowly for an hour. Rub through a sieve, return to the saucepan and make thoroughly hot, pour into a warm tureen, and serve with fried bread.
