The spirit of cookery

* The two soups described (D.D., 869) as d la Orimod de la Jie(piUre and A lajambe de bois — recipes by the editor of the ‘ Ahnanach des Gourmands ’—are mere imitations of the oille en polatje. peas. The meat and vegetables are then arranged on a large dish like a mountain, as described above ; and in this arrangement the cook has much opportunity for the display of ingenuity. The meat is most conveniently carved before being arranged upon the plate. It is also glazed with a coulis made of inspissated broth of the olla, or prepared beforehand. The broth or soup is freed from fat, clarified, and served in a tureen apart. The latter may be eaten apart, and the meat and vegetables after, or the vegetables may be cut up with knife and fork, drenched with soup, and the whole be eaten with a spoon. This latter method, though apparently less elegant, affords the broadest feast of gustation. The oille, It la Frangaise includes all the ingredients of the puchero, and cervelas (sausages) instead of chorizos, and is to be dressed as above described for olla.* Oille gratinde h la Navarroise only differs from the above by the addition of two quarters of fat goose. The smallest and simplest olla may be tasty and good. While travelling in Spain we ate so-called olla — in reality puchero — almost daily, and always found it good. The Castilian used to eat his puchero at about two o’clock ; at six he took again, as in the morning, chocolate — if he had a guest, with ices and pastry ; at eleven o’clock at night he supped on guisaclo, a stew of beef, veal, and potatoes, which was put on the fire just after the mid-day meal had been eaten. * The cooks composed their ouilles as we compose our soups of the nineteenth century — with consommes, fumets, and purees in coulis. They gave the name of soups to rngoftts (which we have termed ensouped entries), such as that of partridges with cabbage, of poularde with white onions, of ducklings with turnips, of sweetbread in white glace. These latter were served in deep oval dishes, tlie consommes separately, but mixed on the plate. The ouilles were served in vessels called avant-poti a ouilles. When the ouilles made room for tlie soups, the vessels became soupieres, and the ragoftts were either called potapes, or resumed their former name, or became drowned in consomme or any kind of bouillon — in short, ensouped. In Galicia the dish which in the rest of Spain is called puchero is supplanted by the caldo, a kind of soup with vegetables, roots, haricots, fresh and salt pork ; it is also eaten by the Gallegos who work in Portugal. We were told that they like the pork a little rancid. The chocolate, very thick in Spain, is very thin in Galicia, and served in large cups. Fish, fowl, and game are excellent in Spain, but frequently spoiled in the preparation. Many Spaniards do not eat hare, alleging that it scratches the earth to dig up the dead. The red-legged partridge is common and good. In Galicia fish is mostly excellent, and the salted sardine, fried in oil, is a daily consolation for breakfast. Tunny is caught and preserved in oil at Castroreale. It is eaten either as it arrives in the small barrels, or stewed again with tomatoes, or mixed with eggs as an omelette, or sauced with pimentos.