Culinary jottings

Grated Parmesan or Gruyere cheese should always be handed round with clear soups, for it improves many of them. Chilli- vinegar in minute particles is considered by some a great improvement. I strongly advise any of my readers who write to England for their stores, not to forget to ask for a little bottle of American " Tabasco,'' or quintessence of cayenne, sold by Messrs. Jackson and Co., Piccadilly, priced half a crown : each bottle is furnished with a patent stopper to enable you to shake out a drop at a time ; two drops in each basin of soup is generally found enough, and the flavour is very good, quite superseding chilli- vinegar for this purpose. The next important feature for consideration in soupmaking is the adding of wine, which, I think, may be regarded as very essential. Madeira or Marsala is better than sherry for most soups. A rich, full, fruity wine, — inexpensive for want of age, and scarcely to be recommended for after dinner drinking, — is the class best adapted for kitchen use. If sherry be preferred, it ought to be a fruity one, and sound, not a cheap extraordinary compound, composed of molasses, washings of sherry casks, and the most villainous brandy ; but honest sherry, lacking age, perhaps, yet bona fide wine. " There is a good saying," observes an author on cookery, that is appropriate here : — " It is no use spoiling the ship for the sake of a ha'porth of tar," — it is, I think, no use spoiling a good soup for the sake of a spoonful of wine." Be careful, however, not to overdo the soupçon of wine that you add to a clear soup ; a good table-spoonful is, to my mind, enough for a tureen filled for eight persons. Thick soups, especially those made of game, mock-turtle, giblet, kidney, and the like, take a larger share of wine : hare soup requires port or burgundy, wild duck and teal soup also, whilst potages of snipe, partridges, quails, jungle-fowls, &c., are, I think, better enriched with Madeira, or Marsala. I have hitherto purposely omitted saying anything concerning the treatment of the meat and vegetables of which a pot-au-feio is made, being anxious to keep strictly to the subject which we have been discussing, — the cookery of a clear consomme. Before I go on with soup-making, however, I beg par parenthèse as it were, to turn back to that period in the preparation of the soup when we strained the consomme from the meat, bones, and vegetables, which had made it. In the Madras kitchen the soup-meat is regarded, I believe, as the perquisite of the cook's maty, which, being interpreted, may be understood to mean really that of the cook himself. Whether this custom be susceptible of reform or not, I hesitate to say, but there can be no doubt at all that, by giving way to it, we often deny ourselves a dish which would be exceedingly nice for a change, — one which, on the continent, is sent to table as a matter of course. In small establishments, or for the quiet dinner alone, I can strongly recommend a trial of home-made houilli, which should be treated in this way : —