Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

After cleaning the fowl, place it in a small stew-pan, breast down. Pour in the water ; and when it has been heated to the boiling-point, skim carefully, and set the pan back where the water will simply simmer until the meat is tender, — say for two hours. When the cooking is over, take up the fowl, and skim all the fat from the water. Strain the water through an old napkin into a clean stew-pan, and put with it the stale bread and the vegetables and spice, tied loosely in a small piece of thin muslin. Simmer for one hour. Meanwhile free the breast of the fowl of skin, fat, and bones ; and after chopping it fine, pound it to powder with a vegetablemasher. Put aside for the present. Blanch the almonds, and pound them to powder in a mortar, adding, in small quantities from time to time, half a cupful of cream taken from the three pints. When the chicken stock has simmered for an hour, take it from the fire ; and after removing the muslin and its contents, rub the stock and bread through a fine sieve. Add the salt, pepper, almonds, powdered breast of the fowl, and the cream. Place on the fire ; and as soon as the mixture boils up, add the flour and butter, rubbed together until creamy. Boil for five minutes, and rub through a French fine sieve. Serve with chicken forcemeat balls. This soup may be begun the day before it is to be served. But the almonds and creain should not be added. Stop when reaching that point. Let your measuring of salt and pepper be generous. Those parts of the fowl not needed for the soup may be used for croquettes, a fricassee, blanquettes, or salad. Puree of Grouse. The ingredients are : a grouse, a quart of beef stock, three pints of water, two table-spoonfuls of butter, one of flour, one-third of a cupful of rice, an onion, a lemon, two stalks of celery, a bay leaf, two cloves, and some salt and pepper. Roast the bird for half an hour. Take all the meat from the bones, and after removing the skin and fat, chop it fine, and pound to powder. Set away for a while, and, putting the bones into a stew-pan containing three pints of water, simmer for three hours. There should be a quart of liquor at the end of that time. Strain it, and return it to the stew-pan. Wash the rice, and put it into a small stew-pan with one cupful and a half of the beef stock, to cook slowly for an hour, — the pan being covered closely all the time. Rub the rice through a sieve, and add it to the powdered grouse. Put the butter, vegetables, bay leaf, and spice into a small frying-pan, and cook slowly for ten minutes ; then draw the pan forward to a place where the heat is greater. Add the flour, and stir until it gets brown. Gradually add the remainder of the stock, and after boiling for five minutes, strain into the dish containing the water in which the bones of the grouse were simmered. Put the rice and grouse into a stew-pan, and after adding the salt and pepper, stir over the fire for eight minutes. Add the seasoned and thickened stock, a little at a time. Heat the puree to the boiling-point, and rub it through a sieve ; then heat it again, and serve with or without force-meat balls, as suits your fancy. After the soup has been put into the tureen, add the lemon, sliced very thin. Potato Soup.