If, after coming to the boil, you find the soup too thin, you must proceed as follows : — mix a little more roux very carefully in a small sauce-pan, add a cupful of the soup to it, and when quite smooth, and free from lumps, pour it by degrees into the soup, off the fire, through a pointed gravy strainer, stirring vigorously as you do so. When quite mixed, replace the vessel on the fire, and let it boil up. THICK SOUPS AND PUREES. 47 I have given several recipes for thick soups such as mock-turtle, ox-tail, giblet, &c,, in my menus, and if the few general rules I have laid down be carefully noted, I think that my readers will experience very little difficulty in carrying them out satisfactorily. And now, we come to the puree which, to my mind, is perhaps one of the most important features of the whole study of cookery. In India this form of preparing our meat and vegetables ought to be much more generally understood and practised than it is. In a puree we can work into a palatable and wholesome condition, meat that from its poverty or tough- ness, would be sorry fare indeed if boiled, or roasted. An ordinary little dish of neatly trimmed mutton-chops (nicely grilled over a clear &e) becomes an artistic entree if served round a nest of mashed potato, containing a delicate puree of vegetable, such as celery, peas, asparagus, tomato, spinach, &c., whilst common onion sauce, thus treated, is promoted to the dignity of sauce souhise. Old partridges and jungle fowl, the remains of cold poultry, and of all game, can be turned to capital account in a puree. Even an ancient, and extraordinarily tough " moorghee^' may be thus rendered fit to eat. For the sick, and for those suffering from tooth- ache, food cooked in this manner is invaluable, whilst there can be no doubt that it must be good for children. In order to be able to accomplish the making of purees satisfactorily you must possess a strong pestle and mortar, a large hair sieve, a wire sieve, and a mincing machine. If you desire to make a puree of meat of any kind, an immense amount of labour is saved by first using the mincer, the work in the mortar is then reduced to a mini- mum, and the pounded meat will soon be ready to pass through the sieve. 48 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS. In using the sieve, by the way, caution your cook that he must always put whatever he wishes to pass through it, at the shallow end., placing the sieve over a large bowl, or dish, big enough to receive it, and rubbing the puree through it with a large wooden spoon. From time to time he must invert the sieve, and scrape off the portion of the puree which always adheres to the reverse side of the hair, or wire. A cook must be patient in the use of this utensil, and achieve his object by perseverance, rather than by boisterous work. If you bear too heavily on the hair, your sieve will soon bulge, and ere long the hair will part company from the wooden cylinder to which it is attached.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

If, after coming to the boil, you find the soup too thin, you must proceed as follows : — mix a little more roux very carefully in a small sauce-pan, add a cupful of the soup to it, and when quite smooth, and free from lumps, pour it by degrees into the soup, off the fire, through a pointed gravy strainer, stirring vigorously as you do so. When quite mixed, replace the vessel on the fire, and let it boil up. THICK SOUPS AND PUREES. 47 I have given several recipes for thick soups such as mock-turtle, ox-tail, giblet, &c,, in my menus, and if the few general rules I have laid down be carefully noted, I think that my readers will experience very little difficulty in carrying them out satisfactorily. And now, we come to the puree which, to my mind, is perhaps one of the most important features of the whole study of cookery. In India this form of preparing our meat and vegetables ought to be much more generally understood and practised than it is. In a puree we can work into a palatable and wholesome condition, meat that from its poverty or toughness, would be sorry fare indeed if boiled, or roasted. An ordinary little dish of neatly trimmed mutton-chops (nicely grilled over a clear fire) becomes an artistic entree if served round a nest of mashed potato, containing a delicate puree of vegetable, such as celery, peas, asparagus, tomato, spinach, &c., whilst common onion sauce, thus treated, is promoted to the dignity of sauce souhise. Old partridges and jungle fowl, the remains of cold poultry, and of all game, can be turned to capital account in a puree. Even an ancient, and extraordinarily tough " moorghee" may be thus rendered fit to eat. For the sick, and for those suffering from tooth- ache, food cooked in this manner is invaluable, whilst there can be no doubt that it must be good for children. In order to be able to accomplish the making of purees satisfactorily you must possess a strong pestle and mortar, a large hair sieve, a wire sieve, and a mincing machine. If you desire to make a puree of meat of any kind, an immense amount of labour is saved by first using the mincer, the work in the mortar is then reduced to a minimum, and the pounded meat will soon be ready to pass through the sieve. In using the sieve, by the way, caution your cook that he must always put whatever he wishes to pass through it, at the shallow end., placing the sieve over a large bowl, or dish, big enough to receive it, and rubbing the puree through it with a large wooden spoon. From time to time he must invert the sieve, and scrape off the portion of the puree which always adheres to the reverse side of the hair, or wire. A cook must be patient in the use of this utensil, and achieve his object by perseverance, rather than by boisterous work. If you bear too heavily on the hair, your sieve will soon bulge, and ere long the hair will part company from the wooden cylinder to which it is attached.

Culinary jottings