Culinary jottings

Purees., as soups, are prepared in this way : — You first must make as good a bowl of stock as you can from bones, meat, scraps, (bones of ham and bacon especially valuable) sufficient for the number of people you have to cater for. Let it get cool and remove the fat that rises to its surface. You should flavour your stock to the best of your capabilities with dried sweet herbs, onion, parsley, a carrot or two, celery, <tc., or such vegetables as may be available, with salt and pepper to taste. The better your stock, or foundation, the better your puree. Suppose, now, that you want to make potage a la Crecy, which in plain terms is carrot puree : — boil as many carrots as you think will suffice for the quantity of soup you have to make in the stock made as aforesaid : when thoroughly done, drain them, and pass them through the sieve. Now, mix the pulp so obtained with sufficient of the stock to make a puree a little thinner than you wish your soup eventually to be. Melt a piece of butter at the bottom of a sauce-pan, and work a little flour into it, gradually adding the puree, and stirring without ceasing till the soup comes to the boil, when it will be found of the proper consistency. Skim, if necessary, and serve. THICK SOUPS, AND PUREES, 49 The pith of this recipe, and of all receipts for purees, lies ill the liaison of melted butter and flour which must be worked into the soup as described, and at the period indicated. Why ? — well, have you ever noticed carrot, or pea-soup, which, when sent to table, instead of looking the creamy red, or green puree that you desired, presented the appearance of a thin gravy soup, with a quantity of the vegetable pulp at the bottom of each basin — the stock and the pulp not having amalgamated ? This result was caused by the omission of the process I have described which is necessary to blend the two together, Crecy soup should be served with bread cut into dice and fried in butter ; or crisped on a buttered tin in the oven after having been soaked in a little of the stock. Croutons, treated in this way, should accompany all vegetable purees. Purees of celery, Jerusalem artichokes, (Palestine soup,) onion, and turnips, if the stock be kept free from colour, can be served as white soups, and cream, or the substitute already described, will be found an improvement to all of them. "" Potage a la reine,^' a very old white soup, is really a puree of fowl or turkey, and an excellent white potage, very like it, can be produced from a rabbit. Those artistic entrees " creme de Jiomard,'' " creme de volaille,'' " crenie d'artichaicts,'' Sf'c, are merely consolidated purees. The quenelle again, is only meat worked to that condition, and bound with bread-crumb, or paste, and eggs. The puree of chestnuts is a well-known delicacy at elaborate banquets at home and abroad, whether in the form of soup, or as a sauce to accompany white entrees, and especially the turkey. The Indian nut commonly known as the " promotion nut," and fresh almonds, mako capital purees if carefully treated^ and I daresay that there are other nuts to be got in India that wonld well repay the trouble of a trial, in the same way.