Mrs. Lincoln's Boston cook book

Melt two sticks of chocolate in two or three tablespoonfuls of hot water. Stir to a smooth paste ; add graduallj^ one pint of hot milk and stir or mill it five minutes. Serve in cups three quarters full with two or three tahlespoonfuls of whipped cream on the top. Sweeten and flavor the cream before whipping. The Boston Cook Book. SOUP. Nothing can be easier than to make a good soup if one only knows how and has the will to do it ; and if one will, it is easy to know how. Considerations of economy and healtlifulness make it the duty of every housekeeper to thoroughly inform herself on the few essential points in soup-making. When these are learned it will be as simple as any other duty. As soups aas not made from nothing, a supply of materials should alwa^^s be kept on hand, such as dried sweet herbs (which may be purchased at any city market for a trifle ; twenty-five cents' worth will last a year or more) ; also whole, as well as ground spices ; and, more particularly, fresh vegetables, — onions^ carrots, and turnips. If we had access to the French market, we could buy the smallest amount whenever it might be desired ; but as only a few marketmen in America will sell a single onion or a single carrot, it is well for those who cannot cultivate for themselves to purchase in large quantities. They maj^ be kept in a cool place by covering with clean sand. Parsley may be grown in the house if you have a sunny window ; and we can all have salt and pepper. Now, having these seasoning materials always at hand, 3'ou may easily find other material in the store-room, or from the day's supply of fresh meat, fish, etc., without buying expressly for soup ; that is, if you, instead of the marketman, have the bones and trimmings. Every pantry should have a " catch all." It is vastly more important there than in the sewing-room or on the toilet-table. The coal-hod, refuse pail, and sink catch all in many households. One or two large bowls — not tin, but deep earthen dishes, provided they are sweet and do The Boston Cook Book, not leak — will better answer the purpose. After breakfast or dinner, do not put away the remnants of steaks or roasts on the platters, but look them over and put by themselves any pieces that can be used again, either cold or in what are called made dishes. Then put all the bones, trimmings, fat, gristle, and everything, especially the platter gravy, which usually flavors the dish-water, into the catch all/' If you have just one bone from a steak or chop, if it be not burned it is worth saving, and in cool weather will keep till you have another. If there be a tablespoonful of any vegetables, a stalk of celery, an egg, baked apple, or a bit of macaroni, put them away neatl3\ You will find a use for them. If you have boiled a fresh tongue, a fowl, a leg of lamb, or a cup of rice, plan to make a soup also, and thus save the water. This economy may be carried to the extreme of saving the water in which cabbages, beans, or potatoes have been boiled, or of keeping a fire several hours in a hot da}' only to save a few cents' worth of bone, or of spoiling all the soup b}^ adding a spoonful of turnip already sour ; but as a rule we err in the opposite practice.