The art of cookery

Clam Chowder. — Cut a quarter of a pound of salt pork into thin slices. Divide the slices into strips and sauté in a spider until brown and crisp. Put the browned pork into a sauce-pan and add to it a minced onion and a tablespoonful of butter. Chop two dozen clams tolerably fine. Pare and cut in dice a quart of potatoes. Skin and cut in pieces a pint of tomatoes. Break into pieces three or four pilot biscuit. To the pork and onion add these things in alternate layers. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover with hot water. Put a tight-fitting lid on the sauce-pan, and simmer gently for half an hour, or until the potato is cooked. Add two cups of hot cream or milk and serve. Fish Chowder. — Prepare fresh codfish by removing the skin and bones and cutting the fish in pieces about an inch square. Follow the directions given for making clam chowder, using, in place of the clams, four cups of the prepared codfish. Codfish makes the finest fish chowder, but other fish can be used, if desired. Worcestershire or other fish sauce may be served with either fish or clam chowder. BISQUES. Among soups the bisques hold a place about midway between creams and purees. The creams are smoother than either the bisques or purees. In consistency the bisques are thicker than the creams but thinner than the purees. Bisque of Tomato. — Prepare a Tomato Soup No. 2, Soup- Making. 121 add a cup of sweet cream and a pinch of soda, and serve immediately. Bisque of Lobster. — To two cups of boiled lobster, freed from bits of shell, add half a cup of tomato and two cups of compound stock. Simmer fifteen minutes, let cool, pound, if necessary, and rub through a sieve. Cook together one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, add the strained lobster, simmer five minutes, pour in two cups of cream, heat to boiling point, season to taste, and serve.ve. Bisque of Clams. — Simmer two dozen clams in their own juice about five minutes and drain the liquor from them into a bowl. Chop the clams fine, or pound them in a mortar, mix with the liquor, and rub through a sieve. Cook together in a sauce-pan two tablespoonfuls each of butter and flour, add the strained clams and two cups of milk, and heat to boiling point. Stir the mixture while heating, season to taste, and serve. Bisque of Oysters. — Bisque of oysters may be prepared like bisque of clams. In either case one tablespoonful of butter may be omitted, and a cup of cream substituted for the cup of milk. PUREES. No matter how much of a vegetable is used for thickening a pur6e a small quantity of arrow-root, cornstarch, or flour should be used to hold the vegetable in solution and make the soup smooth. And when the vegetable is delicate in flavor it should be cooked in a small quantity of water and all the water be used in making the puree. 122 The Art of Cookery. Puree of Peas. — Cook together one tablespoonful of butter and two tablespoonfuls of flour, add two cups of peas cooked very tender, in just enough water to cover them, and rubbed through a sieve, also the water in which the peas cooked, and two cups of veal or chicken broth. Let simmer ten minutes, season, and serve.