Harper's cook book encyclopædia

— Six quarts of water, 4 lbs. of lean beef, two old hens, two carrots, two turnips, two onions, two leeks, one bunch of fine herbs. Let it simmer slowly for eight hours, or till it is reduced to two quarts, observing the same rule as to skimming and straining ; and use for dainty appetites, with any of the garnishes for soups, such as quenelles, etc. Corn Soup. — To each quart of young corn cut from the cob allow three pints of water. Boil until the grains are tender. Take 2 ozs. of sweet butter, mixed smooth with one table-spoonful of flour ; stir the butter into the soup, and let it boil ten or fifteen minutes longer. Just before taking out of the pot, beat up an egg and stir into it, with salt and pepper to your taste. Crab Soup. — Take one quart of milk, and with it put a small onion, grated, and a little parsley, chopped fine; then add the meat of six crabs (about one cupful), and boil all to- gether five minutes. Cream one tablespoonful of flour and one of butter together, moistening with a little hot milk, and then add to the soup, with half a pint of cream, one teaspoonful of ground mace, the chopped yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, a little salt and cayenne pepper. Let all boil for five minutes, and serve. Canned crabs may be used. Crawfish Soup, or Potage Bisque. — Take fifty crawfish (or one hundred prawns, if crawfish cannot be obtained). Remove the gut from the centre fin of the tail, or it will make the soup bitter. Shell the fish and keep the tails whole. Pound the shells with 4 ozs. of fresh butter, the crumb of a French roll, and three anchovies, and put them in a stewpan with two quarts of fish stock, 4 ozs. of washed rice, a dessert-spoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of pepper, and an onion stuck with three cloves. Simmer for two hours. Put the pounded meat, but not the tails, into the soup, simmer again, then press the whole through a sieve. Make the soup hot before serving it, but do not let it boil. Five minutes before it is taken from the fire put in the tails whole. Serve with croutons. A tumblerful of wine is an improvement to this soup. Cream Soups are usually made of the purees of fresh vegetables thickened with butter, cream, and yolks of raw eggs. Vegetable stock is used for Lenten soups, meat stock for many others. See Puree, page 320. Croutons. — Bread cut into small dice and fried in clarified fat until brown and crisp. They are to be added to the soup just before serving. Eel Soup. — To 1 lb. of eel allow a quart of water. Cut up 2 lbs. of eel and fry to a light brown in butter in the stewpan; pour over two quarts of water, a crust of bread, a sliced onion, with mace, pepper, and sweet herbs ; cover and simmer slowly till the eel will easily slip from the bone; take Egg Soup SOUPS Fruit Soups or Bouillons out the fish, remove the bones, which return to the soup, and keep the flesh hot; let the soup simmer for an hour, adding a carrot scraped to it, then rub down two table-spoonfuls of flour in cream, if you have it ; if not, use milk ; thicken and strain the soup, toast a thin slice of bread, cut it in slips or dice, lay the fish on it, and serve the soup over it.