The spirit of cookery

fare for fast-days, except as regards the soup, for nearly all soups become unattractive by the absence of savour in the shape of broth. This circumstance has, no doubt, contributed much to the deterioration of soups in general, and their gradual abandonment by the healthy part of the population. Cooks, however, placed opposite an economical demand, have endeavoured to supply substitutes for meatbroth in the shape of the following decoctions. Fish-Broth. Very few fish give an edible broth; the decoctions of most of them are not agreeable to an educated taste, and all of them are of no nutritive value ; even the best fishbroth must be kept very weak, as when strong it is equally unacceptable. As good fish has to furnish the more substantial dishes, we have never known it used for the production of fish-broth ; conger eel, which is not very good or not very easy to eat, on account of its many prickly bones, is used for the production of fish-broth in Bretagne. Most fish used for soup is filleted and made into puree, and only the skeletons and heads are boiled with herbs and water. Thus a flavoured liquid, but without much savoury extractive, is obtained. English cooks use flounders, eels, and anchovies for making fish broth. V egetable - Broth. A kind of vegetable-broth is made from peas {bouillon de 2)ois) and haricot beans by diluting purees and retaining the woody particles on the tammy. We have already seen ; how the vegetarians miscall this decoction ‘ stock,’ and deceive themselves and inexperienced credulous persons with this fallacy ; we have known the growth of young children stunted by the application to them of this lament- I able fad by their faddist mother. Soup Sauces. Many of the soups, particularly fish soups, described in culinary treatises, are in fact much less soups than somewhat elongated ragouts. The more solid ingredients of such soups are the same as, and undergo preparatory processes similar to, the solid constituents of ragouts. It is owing to the recognition of this fact by practical cooks that they have termed the liquid part of these complicated dishes soup sauces.^ We simply adopt this term as we find it, because we believe it to be highly descriptive. When our readers come to study sauces, they will see that the differences between them and soups are mainly differences of concentration. A soup sauce is, shortly defined, a coulis. A Becipe for a Savoury Soup Sauce, e.g., of Eel Fillets, is the following : Cut up small carrots, celery, parsley, roots and leaves, shallots, and a liberal number of mushrooms ; add thyme, bay-leaf, sweet basil, peppercorns, and mace. Fry them in 4 oz. of butter, then add a little wine and three pints of standard broth of any origin, and boil for an hour. Then strain the broth through a tammy, using any available pressure to the residue ; put the liquid into a stewpan, thicken it with white roux, and give it an appropriate consistency, so as to keep it more mobile than sauce ought to be. Finish it with a liaison of yolks of eggs, and point with tinctures of spices and chopped parsley. Then pour this soup sauce over the fried, boiled, or braised fillets of eel, or any available crayfish, or prawn-tails, in the souptureen, and stir gently. Out of a great number of so-called fish soups* we indicate a selection, partly with definitions ;