The profession of cookery, from a French point of view

ounce of butter, stew the onion and sorrel in this (in a covered stewpan) for about half an hour. Meanwhile, bring a quart of water to boiling point in the soup-pot, throw into it a slice of stale white bread cut into dice (no crust), and let it boil till the sorrel is ready. Add that next, then a teaspoonful of salt, half one of pepper, and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Let all boil up once, then pour into the tureen. A pinch of dried herbs or just one grate of nutmeg may be added then. Watercress Soup. The foundation of this soup is best made from a puree of haricot beans. They should have been soaked overnight, then boiled for two or three hours, or until they will rub through a sieve. Chop the watercress, and cook it in butter with an onion also chopped, as the sorrel was done. Add enough boiling water to the haricot puree to bring it down to the consistency of cream ; then stir in the watercress, etc., and any other green herb you may possess. Just before serving stir in a tablespoonful of cream, and salt and pepper to season it well. A pint of haricots should be sufficient for a quart of good soup. CHAPTER XII. %cc^5 ant) ©nlons. A LTHOUGH some attention has been paid -^^^ to the uses of leeks and onions in the previous chapters, yet for their great medicinal and useful properties they merit more particular study. The wonderful faculty which onions possess of absorhlng disease germs ought to be written in letters of gold before the eyes of every householder. Merely hanging in a net they will purify an apartment, and a string of onions suspended from the ceiling preserved the inmates of a whole cottage from being attacked by cholera, when the scourge was devastating the whole of the neighbourhood. Especially in cases of that fell disease diphtheria have they great power. A dish of raw onions sliced and set in the sick-room, will draw away the disease and give ease to the sufferer ; LEEKS AND ONIONS. 141 as their odour gives out they should be replaced by fresh ones. Poison of any kind will discolour an onion. If one be placed in a dish of mushrooms about whose orthodoxy there is felt the slightest doubt, the suspicion may be quickly removed or proved thereby, as the onion will turn black if they are unwholesome. They are a stimulant also, rousing and aiding digestion. Many persons who complain of onions being difficult of digestion would find the objection removed — or considerably lessened — if they were cooked thus : cooking them quickly at the first start, then drawing aside and covering well, allow them to simmer gently for some time ; this draws out the juice, which can be poured off. If treated thus, they will hardly disagree with the most fastidious. To confess to a liking for onions is — sad to say — considered vulgar, but our French friends are notable as proclaiming their weakness for both onions and garlic by the scent they carry about with them. Although certainly related to onions leeks are not the same, nor even similar. They are more prized in Wales and Scotland than in England, and are very highly esteemed in France, where 142 LEEKS AND ONIONS, they are used as a vegetable alone, and never upon any account are tliey omitted from the potagere.