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

dish. In making soup from pig's-head the cook will have considerable difficulty in getting rid of the grease. The only way to get rid of the grease from soup of this description is to let the soup simmer gently by the fire and skim it, occasionally throwing in a little cold water, which will assist in throwing up the grease. In making mock turtle from pig’s-head I think two or three beads of garlic placed in the soup is a very great improvement ; the soup itself is so rich that it will bear a strong garlic flavour. We have now described how to make, with the addition of some extract of meat, good stock or thick soups. Cooks should remember, however, that it is impossible to make really good clear soup from bones. If we want to make really good clear soup from extract of meat we shall require the assistance of a small quantity of knuckle of veal. All good cookery-books give receipts for making stews, soups, gravies, etc., but it should be remembered that many of these receipts have been handed down almost by tradition from time immemorial, and that the majority of them were written when gravy-beef could be bought at about threepence per pound. Many, therefore, of these receipts, which in themselves were admirable ones when meat was at this price, in the present day are extravagant simply on the ground of the great increase in the price of gravy-beef. Extract of meat, however, supplies the deficiency. By far the best extract of meat that has yet been produced is that sold by Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell, under their own name. The secret of its being so good is simply due to the fact that it is made where meat is a penny or twopence per pound — namely, m Australia. To make extract of meat in this country would be simply impossible unless it were sold at six times its present cost. Now, there is a great prejudice on the part of some housekeepers and cooks against extract of meat for making soups. This prejudice, however, is utterly unreasonable and unfounded. Soup that is made from knuckle of veal and vegetables, to which extract of meat is afterwards added, is simply soup that is made from knuckle of veal and gravy-beef, the only difference being that part of the cooking, or rather stewing down, of the meat was done in an Australian instead of in an English kitchen. To make | good clear stock from knuckle of veal and extract of meat take say about three pounds of knuckle of veal, chop it up, being careful to remove every particle of marrow from the bones, the fact being that this marrow would cause the soup) to get cloudy, and also as much as possible trim away every p)article of fat. The veal should now be put in thesaucepan simply like the bones were before, and two quarts of water and the same vegetables as before mentioned should be added, and the whole allowed to boil, or rather gently simmer, for not less than six hours. By far the best fire over which to make good soup or stock is a small gas-stove. The gas can be so regulated by simply turning a tap that the soup can be left to simmer and not boil. There is a considerable difference between the two. Cooks are too often heard to gpeak of letting things boil gently. The temperature of boiling water is exactly the same, whether it boils gently or furiously — it is simply boiling water — 212°.