Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Wine Soups. — Wine soups, made of light German wine, are very common throughout Germany. They are very quickly made. Two or three recipes are given. No. 1. Dissolve an ounce of butter in a saucepan, stir into it briskly a table-spoonful of flour, and beat the paste over the fire till it acquires a little colour. Stir into it half a pint of water, and add the thin rind and strained juice of half a fresh lemon, half a stick of cinnamon, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, and a small bottle of light wine. Simmer the soup for ten minutes, break three eggs iuto the tureen, and froth them lightly. Mix them with a spoonful of the soup. Add the rest gradually, and serve. No. 2. Boil two ounces of best rice and thethin rind of half a lemon in three-quarters of a pint of water. When the rice is tender, mix with it gradually a small bottle of wine, and add as much white sugar as will sweeten it pleasantly. Break two eggs into the tureen, mix with them a spoonful of the soup, and serve. No. 3. Cut a large fresh lemon into thin slices, carefully removing the seeds. Put them into a tureen, cover with powdered white sugar, and add a tea-cupful of grated bread-crumbs which have been browned in butter. Mix a pint of wine with half a pint of water. Sweeten the mixture, and bring it to the point of boiling. Pour it upon the slices of lemon, &c., let them soak for five minutes, and serve. Send small sponge cakes to table as an accompaniment. Wine-sour Plums, To Preserve (excellent).— Pick off the stalks, weigh the plums, and take half their weight in loaf sugar pounded. Tear the skin of the seam with a pin, and put the fi uit and the sugar, in alternate layers, into a large earthen jar. Cover the jar closely, and put it in the oven in a shallow tin of boiling water. Keep the water boiling under it. When the plums are soft, pour the syrup from them ; boil it, pour it over the fruit, and leave them till cold. Do this several times until the skin looks hard and the plums clear. Let them stand a week, then take them up one by one with a spoon and put them into jars. Boil the syrup once more, and pour it over them. If there is not sufficient syrup to cover them, add syrup to it, made in the proportion of a pound of sugar to a tea-cupful of water. When the plums are cold, place brandied papers upon them, and tie a bladder over, to keep them air-tight ; otherwise, they will lose their colour. If stored in a cool dry place, plums thus preserved will keep for years. Time, about ten days. Wine-sours are plums; peculiar to Yorkshire. Wine-sours, To Preserve (a more expeditious method). — Skin and stone the plums, and boil them till soft. Put with them three-quarters of their weight in sugar, and stir them continuously till the sjTup will set when a little is put upon a plate. Pour the jam into jars, and cover in the usual way. Store in a cool dry place. Time to boil the plums, threequarters of an hour without sugar; about a quarter of an hour with sugar.