The thorough good cook

Have three middle-sized, or five small lobsters — hen lobsters if possible — ready boiled, and five pints of veal gravy, though beef or n:iutton stock will answer very well. Break off and bruise in a mortar the small claws and fins, with an anchovy, a piece of lemon-peel, and a couple of onions. Put these to the stock, and simmer till you have obtained all the strength and flavour they contain. Strain off the stock. Split the tails, crack without mangling the great claws and carefully take out the meat, cutting it into small pieces, and lay it aside. Pick the meat from the chine, and take part of the coral, the soft part of a few oysters, an anchovy, the quarter of a nutmeg, a blade of mace, a little cayenne, and a teaspoonful of lemon-peel grated. Put these in a mortar, beat them up with the yolks of two eggs and a very little flour ; make of this a dozen or more small forcemeat balls for the soup. Next bruise the spawn in the mortar with a little flour, and, rubbing it through a sieve, put the balls, with the meat of the claws and tails and the coral left from the forcemeat, into the soup. Fr}- the forcemeat balls first, if you like, or brown them in a Dutch oven ; after putting them in, the soup may simmer for a quarter of an hour, but must not boil. Squeeze the juice of a lemon or a Seville orange through a strainer into the tureen, and serve. 49. A Cheaper Lobster Scup. Make a good stock of a piece of beef, a slice of ham, butter, a good many onions, and some pepper, and any fish and lobster trimmings you may have. Strain the stock, pulping the onions ; pound the spawn and body of the lobster as above, and stir into the soup. Mix it smoothly with the stock; season with cayenne and white pepper — a glass of sherry, if you like — skim off the scum, and add the cut bits of the tail and claws as directed above. 50. Lady Morgan Soup. Lady Morgan (wife of Sir Charles Morgan, a physician) was popular between 1820 and 1835 as a lively novelist. She was a great friend of the famous Careme, who invented this soup in her honour. Raise the fillets from a middle-sized plaice, a sole, and a small eel ; cut up the bones and trimmings of the fillets, which put in a stew-pan, adding half a bottle of champagne, the Hesh of a lemon, the skins of a pound of truffles, a pottle of mushrooms, two onions, a carrot, a head of celery, and two leeks, the whole sliced ; half a bay-leaf, a little thyme, basil, savouiy marjoram, a little grated nutmeg and cayenne pepper, two cloves, two anchoyies washed, and a little salt ; simmer these for an hour, and strain through a silk sieve, to add afterwards to some veal stock. Now "jump" the fillets of the fish, and trim them in scollops ; make a large whiting into forcemeat, using instead of the fresh butter, a butter of crayfish, mould it into small balls with teaspoons, and poach them in some broth. Cut the truffles that were skinned and dressed in stock with a root-cutter one inch in diameter, to scollop them afterwards, one-sixth of an inch in thickness. When about to serve, strain the forcemeat balls, lay them in the tureen witli the scollops of fish drained on a napkin, as also the truffles, and twenty mushrooms turned, two dozen oysters, as usually prepared, as many tails of prawns, and the crayfish tails, from the shel