Original White House Cookbook

For making two quarts of soup, Use two bundles of fresh asparagus. Cut the tops from one of the bunches and cook them twenty minutes in salted water, enough to cover them. Cook the remainder of the asparagus about twenty minutes in a quart of stock or water. Cut an onion into thin slices and fry in three tablespoonfuls of butter ten minutes, being careful not to scorch it; then add the asparagus that has been boiled in the stock ; cook this five minutes, stirring constantly ; then add three tablespoonfuls of dissolved flour, cook five minutes longer. Turn this mixture into the boiling stock and boil twenty minutes. Rub through a sieve ; add the milk and cream and the asparagus heads. If water is used in place of stock, use all cream. GREEN PEA SOUP. Wash a small quarter of lamb in cold water, and put it into a soup-pot with six quarts of cold water; add to it two tablespoonfuls of salt, and set it over a moderate fire — let it boil gently for two hours, then skim it clear; add a quart of shelled peas, and a teaspoonful of pepper; cover it, and let it boil for half an hour; then having scraped the skins from a quart of small young potatoes, add them to the soup; cover the pot and let it boil for half an hour, longer; work quarter of a pound of butter and a dessert-spoonful of fiour together, and add them to the soup ten or twelve minutes before taking it off the fire. Serve the meat on a disn with parsley sauce over it, and the soup in a tureen. DRIED BEAN SOUP. Put two quarts of dried white beans to soak the night before you make the soup, which should be put on as early in the day as possible. Take two pounds of the lean of fresh beef — the course pieces will do. Cut them up and put them into your soup-pot with the bones belonging to them (which should be broken in pieces), and a pound of lean bacon, cut very small. If you have the remains of a piece of beef that has been roasted the day before, and so much under-done that the juices remain in it, you may put it into the pot and its bones along with it. Season the meat with pepper only, and pour on it six quarts of water. As soon as it boils, take off the scum, and put in the beans (having first drained them) and a head of celery cut small, or a tablespoonful of pounded celery seed. Boil it slowly till the meat is done to shreds, and the beans all dissolved. Then strain it through a colander into the tureen, and put into it small squares of toasted bread with the crust cut off. TURTLE SOUP FROM BEANS. Soak over night one quart of black beans; next day boil them in the proper quantity of water, say a gallon, then dip the beans out of the pot and strain them through a colander. Then return the flour of the beans, thus pressed, into the pot in which they were boiled. Tie up in a thin cloth some thyme, a teaspoonful of summer savory and parsley, and let it boil in the mixture. Add a tablespoonful of cold butter, salt and pepper. Have ready four hard-boiled yolks of eggs quartered, and a few force meat balls ; add this to the soup with a sliced lemon, and half a glass of wine just before serving the soup. This approaches so near in flavor to the real turtle soup that few are able to distinguish the difference. PHILADELPHIA PEPPER POT.