The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

I was lately staying in a house by the seaside, where to my astonishment I found the person who let the lodgings had been in the habit of throwing away the water in which meat had been boiled, and had never even heard of the fact that this would make excellent soup. Extract of meat should be used in making soups — not by itself alone, but in addition to some cheap form of meat which can be stewed down to make stock. Perhaps one of the best mediums for making good stock for ordinary purposes is bones. I will just describe how to make some good soup from bones with the assistance of some extract of meat. Take say threepennyworth of bones, and put them in cold water, about • two quarts, with one carrot, one turnip, one onion in which half a dozen cloves have been stuck, and a small head of celery, or some trimmings of celery, and a bunch of parsley. When a good-sized head of celery is bought it should bo thoroughly washed and then trimmed. The best part—namely, the hard white part—can be reserved to be eaten with cheese after dinner, or to be used for celery sauce or stewed celery, while the trimmings of the celery can be used for the stockpot. If possible, in addition to these vegetables, slice up and add three or four leeks. Sometimes when the flavour of' onion is not liked four or five leeks can be sliced up and substituted for the onion. Let the whole of this simmer gently for five or six hours. (It is always best to make this sort of soup the day before it is required to be eaten.) Then strain it off into a large basin, cover it over with a cloth, and let it get cold. In the morning the fat can be removed from the top, the soup poured again into the saucepan, and made to boil. Then add a brimming teaspoonful of extract of meat. You will now have the base of a really good soup. This soup can be thickened with some brown roux — (see Roux, Brown) — and some carrot and turnip should be cut up and put in it. Of course, by adding more extract of meat the soup can be rendered much richer. The original quantity of water added to the stock was two quarts, but we have supposed that by boiling, etc. , this has been reduced to three pints. Good gravy can be made by simply allowing say a pint of this soup to gently boil away until it has reduced itself to about half the original quantity. Cooks do not sufficiently understand the importance of letting weak soups boil away. Extract of meat is in reality very good beef-tea that contains no gelatine, but on the contrary, the juice of the meat itself that has been boiled away until it has become the thick compound which we see. This kind of thick stock forms an excellent base for various kinds of soup, such as thick oxtail, mock turtle, mulligatawny, pea, hare soup, etc. Good thick oxtail soup is simply an oxtail cut up and boiled in soup of this description, and a few vegetables added. Mock-turtle soup is simply calves’-head boiled in stock of this description. The meat must be cut up into small squares * about an inch and a half in size, and, of course, the bones removed. One very excellent soup, that may be called mock mock -turtle, can be made by substituting pig’s-head for calves’-head. Of course, hi both cases the head must be very carefully washed and the tongue and brains removed before it is boiled. The latter can be made into a very nice separate