Culinary jottings

Let us assume that the recipe for pot-au-feu has been strictly carried out as far as the straining stage, and that all the vegetables, or as many of them as were procurable, have been used : now, place the meat on a dish, remove the string that bound it, and serve it upon a bed of maccaroni previously boiled till tender, and a puree obtained by rubbing all the vegetables through the wire sieve, moistened with a portion of the bouillon or consomme ; or on a bed of stewed cabbage, with the other vegetables neatly arranged round it, in the clear broth. Don't rush away with the Anglo-Saxon idea that there is no " goodness" (Martha's word) in soup-meat, " There is," says the G.C., " as much nutriment in it, when eaten with the soup it has yielded, as there would have been, had it been roasted ; and much more than if it had been converted into salt junk, as it is the English custom to do with the silverside of beef." You can vary the houilli by tomato sauce, any piquante sauce, or even souhise. The soup-meat served with maccaroni, grated Parmesan, and purée of tomatoes is the favourite " manzo guernito'' of the Italian dinner. Talking of soup-meat, does every one know that the potted meats so largely exported, and commonly appreciated in this country, are made from the meat of which the tinned soups are composed ? It is a fact nevertheless, and every atom of meat is thus turned to account by the preserved provision dealers. The potted meat you see in a confectioner's window at home, neatly capped with melted butter, is made from the beef which produced the stock of the mock-turtle (I bet anything it is " mockturtle,") he advertises at a shilling a basin — enterprising man ! I once tested this myself. Having before me a large piece of soup-meat apparently full of nutriment, I determined as an experiment, to make potted meat of it. Martha, my cook, looked sourly on, — I little knew that I was robbing her of the price of that meat from the nearest pastry-cook, — and called it, for her part, a " hawful mess" ; but we, who ate it, found it delicious. In London, and all large towns in England, a regular private trade in soupmeat, dripping, and fragments, is carried on between our cooks and the keepers of refreshment rooms, which both parties regard as perfectly legitimate. But to return to the subject of soups. Although we may succeed in mastering the difficulties of the consommé, or foundation of soup-making, we must not forget that our work may be spoiled by the introduction of some barbarism peculiar to the Indian kitchen. An idea prevails with some people that clear soups require to be assisted with gelatine, or isinglass, to give them a sort of glutinous consistency. Ramasamy has discovered a very pernicious sort of starch which he produces from a raw-potato, and by this compound the soup in many houses, I know, is ruined. The potato imparts a crude, inky flavour to the consomme which is hard to describe on paper, but is fatal in its effect upon the palate. It kills all the flavour of the meat and vegetables. Ramasamy should be cautioned on no account to use what he calls " potato-thickening" again, in any circumstances whatever, and, once for all, let me observe that clear soups require no isinglass. The consomme cannot be too bright, light, and clear.