Culinary jottings

sieve, and, communicated to the stock in the form of a thick pulp, as in the case of puree d'artichauts 'puree de legumes, puree de gihier, §"0. A soup partaking of the character of a thinnish puree helped up by artificial aid in the way of thickening, is called by some writers a potage a la puree. The bisque again is a puree, strictly speaking, of cray fish (mixed ecrevisses) or of lobster (de liomard), but it can be made successfully with crab, prawns, and shrimps ; indeed a nice bisque can be made with any fish. — So much for names. Let us now turn our attention to beef consomme for we may regard it as the foundation upon which nearly every soup is based. " Stock," says a capital writer on cookery, " is to a cook what the medium or the water is to the painter in oils or in water colours. It may be defined, generally speaking, as a solution in water of the nutritive, and sapid elements contained in meat and bones : salt and spices added to it to make it savoury, and if to this you add the flavour of various vegetables, you have soup." "We must remember, however, to start with, that soup in India must be made in one day. We cannot fall back upon the never-empty stock pot of the English kitchen : ours must be made daily, and, to guard against waste, only in sufficient quantity for the day's consumption. In saying this I have, of course, mainly before me the climate of Madras, and of the plains of Southern India. At the Hill stations and during the cold weather in the northern part of the country, the method obtaining in British households may, no doubt, with care, and slight modification, be followed. Our soup, then, being actually an ephemeral production, how should we proceed ? " For the type of all stockmaking," says the Gr. C. " there can be no better recipe taken then that of the French pot-au-feu,'' let us therefore consider attentively the following recipe for that most valuable of culinary operations. Put a piece of soup-meat, — say of four pounds weight, in the proportion of three pounds of flesh to one of bone, — (the recipe can, of course, be followed by adding or reducing as you may require but preserving like proportion) tightly bound with a string, with two ounces of salt and the bones separately broken up, into a stock pot filled with water, so as to completely cover the meat. Put the pot by the side of the fire and let it become gradually heated. As this takes place, a scum will form upon the surface which must be carefully removed as it rises. When nearly boiling, a coffee cupful of cold water should be thrown into the pot to accelerate the rising of the scum. The clearness of the soup will depend remember, upon all the scum being taken off, and upon the water being kept from boiling point until it is all removed. This having been done ; put into the saucepan the following vegetables which should have been previously carefully cleaned and cut up, viz. : — a couple of large white onions, a clove of garlic, two large or three small carrots, two or three turnips, six leeks, one head of celery, a bunch of curly parsley, and two cloves in the onion. Then put in, tied up in a piece of muslin, some thyme, marjoram, and a handful of whole pepper, — a tea-spoonful each of dried thyme and marjoram will be quite enough.