Of mussel soup Dumas speaks as his own invention. He begins the execution of his recipe with pot-au-feii at 11 a.m., and then continues his directions as follows : At 4 p.m. put into a great casserole twelve tomatoes and the same number of white onions, and let them boil in broth during an hour. Then pass them through a tammy, and add to the salted and spiced puree 4 oz. of good meat glace. Open the mussels by heating them in a casserole, retain the liquid, and cut off beards and byssi. Boil them in white wine, with an assorted bouquet, chopped carrots, and a small glassful of vinegar, some tincture of pepper, and salt. Mix these mussels and their sauce with the pur^e. Instead of the mussels, praynes, also conchylia, may be used. Prawns, shrimps, and crayfish may be similarly treated, but it is preferable to elevate their extract to the dignity of bisque. The mussel* is liable to be unwholesome by occasionally * The name of this bivalve marine shellfish should be spelled mussel, and not muscle. It is a Saxon name for shell, concha; in German, MuSihel; French, moule. The species here meant is Mies-Muschel, in German. Its zoological ‘barbarous binomial’ is Mitylus edulis ; but in SOUPS FROM SHELLFISH 183 containing a poisonous substance, mytilotoxine, an alkaloid. But this condition seems limited to mussels which have lived in unwholesome, sewage-contaminated localities, and probably been made sick thereby. Cooking seems to diminish or destroy the toxicity. Vougoli sottp used to he a well-made standing dish at the restaurant of Mergellina, near the chateau called at Naples that of Queen Johanna, although it never was so. A recipe given by Dumas* is very similar to the foregoing one for mussels, but it is in the meagre key of variation. The shell- fish called vougoli in Italy are named praynes in France, and are eaten at Marseilles and nearly all seaports of France. Bisgue or crayfish soup, anglice also called bisk and chillis, is an interesting product of magiric art. It was called cullis in this country prohahly because it required a couMs or blond de veau, for its completion ; but the word is now obsolete in England, and as much forgotten as the word coulis is by modern French cooks. This fact, to our mind, shows better than anything else the state of decadence of the art of cookery, and the deterioration of literature, which does not even record the means by which the art attained its high development. In history we find that a word is not often lost unless the thing be lost first, and even then the name survives the thing for long periods. We might argue that as modern French works do not contain the word coulis, the thing itself had been lost ; it has certainly been lost for the main purposes for which it was formerly pro- duced, and what remains are its weakened reminiscences. The appreciation of savour has been diminished down to the thia also the y is erroneous, and its place should be filled by i, as the derivation is not from the Greek five (mouse), but from the mitulus, mutulua. (Of. ‘Heind. at Herat. Sat.,’ 2, 4, 28 ; Martial, 3, 60, 4 ; Ath., 3, p. 85.) The Greek for mussel is tellina. Oyster, Mussel, and Vougoli Soup are well garnished with quenelles of whiting. Cf, F., 336. i84 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY level of dry champagne, but taste, instead of becoming coarse, has stooped to insipidity.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Of mussel soup Dumas speaks as his own invention. He begins the execution of his recipe with pot-au-feii at 11 a.m., and then continues his directions as follows : At 4 p.m. put into a great casserole twelve tomatoes and the same number of white onions, and let them boil in broth during an hour. Then pass them through a tammy, and add to the salted and spiced puree 4 oz. of good meat glace. Open the mussels by heating them in a casserole, retain the liquid, and cut off beards and byssi. Boil them in white wine, with an assorted bouquet, chopped carrots, and a small glassful of vinegar, some tincture of pepper, and salt. Mix these mussels and their sauce with the purée. Instead of the mussels, praynes, also conchylia, may be used. Prawns, shrimps, and crayfish may be similarly treated, but it is preferable to elevate their extract to the dignity of bisque. The mussel is liable to be unwholesome by occasionally * The name of this bivalve marine shellfish should be spelled mussel, and not muscle. It is a Saxon name for shell, concha; in German, MuSihel; French, moule. The species here meant is Mies-Muschel, in German. Its zoological ‘barbarous binomial’ is Mitylus edulis ; but in SOUPS FROM SHELLFISH containing a poisonous substance, mytilotoxine, an alkaloid. But this condition seems limited to mussels which have lived in unwholesome, sewage-contaminated localities, and probably been made sick thereby. Cooking seems to diminish or destroy the toxicity. Vougoli soup used to be a well-made standing dish at the restaurant of Mergellina, near the chateau called at Naples that of Queen Johanna, although it never was so. A recipe given by Dumas* is very similar to the foregoing one for mussels, but it is in the meagre key of variation. The shellfish called vougoli in Italy are named praynes in France, and are eaten at Marseilles and nearly all seaports of France. Bisgue or crayfish soup, anglice also called bisk and chillis, is an interesting product of magiric art. It was called cullis in this country probably because it required a couMs or blond de veau, for its completion ; but the word is now obsolete in England, and as much forgotten as the word coulis is by modern French cooks. This fact, to our mind, shows better than anything else the state of decadence of the art of cookery, and the deterioration of literature, which does not even record the means by which the art attained its high development. In history we find that a word is not often lost unless the thing be lost first, and even then the name survives the thing for long periods. We might argue that as modern French works do not contain the word coulis, the thing itself had been lost ; it has certainly been lost for the main purposes for which it was formerly produced, and what remains are its weakened reminiscences. The appreciation of savour has been diminished down to the this also the y is erroneous, and its place should be filled by i, as the derivation is not from the Greek five (mouse), but from the mitulus, mutulua. (Of. ‘Heind. at Herat. Sat.,’ 2, 4, 28 ; Martial, 3, 60, 4 ; Ath., 3, p. 85.) The Greek for mussel is tellina. Oyster, Mussel, and Vougoli Soup are well garnished with quenelles of whiting. Cf, F., 336. level of dry champagne, but taste, instead of becoming coarse, has stooped to insipidity.

The spirit of cookery