Chicken Soup

Ingredients

• a chicken
• with bread-crumbs
• basted with butter
• salt
• pepper

Method

1. 1

   Cook the chicken in water to make soup.

2. 2

   Remove the chicken, stuff it with bread-crumbs, dredge with flour, and baste with butter before roasting in the oven.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from With a saucepan over the sea (1902) by Adelaide Keen, page 78. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

salt and pepper compared with Americans. Good pure food, with the simple, fresh flavor inherent, does not require seasoning to heighten its excellence, and stale meat or adulterated materials are not thus rendered any more wholesome. In coming back to America after a trip abroad, you notice first the excess of salt in everything, especially bread and butter ; then the muddy complexions and harsh 240 With a Saucepan over the Sea voices. Too much salt, as any one knows, irritates the mucous membranes and causes skin diseases, and too much pepper inflames and dries the blood, injuring the liver beyond repair. In Europe, especially in France, they think that soup is most important once a day, strong, nourishing, satisfying. Even the poorest peasant has good broth. It satisfies hunger, keeping one from eating too much meat; and according to French tradition, the glass of light wine taken after, called "le coup d'apres," robs the doctor of a fee. If stock is made, and all scraps utilized, soup can be had each day for dinner. Nothing need be wasted. Even the dish of hash, left over, can be turned into excellent soup. If it were heated again, it would be tough and tasteless. An onion, a carrot, some herbs, and the meat with the gravy must be put with enough water, boiled an hour or more, strained and thickened with flour and butter, then, say, a little boiled rice added, or some croutons, with salt and pepper. Half a dish of macaroni and cheese, with the gravy and bones of fried chicken, an onion, a carrot, a bit of celery, and some herbs, water, of course, will, if cooked awhile, and rubbed through a sieve with the addition of a cup of boiling milk, the yolk of an egg, or some butter and flour, salt, i6 241 With a Saucepan over the Sea pepper, and chopped parsley, and a pinch of nut- meg, result in a very appetizing soup. So on indefinitely. Not a scrap need be wasted ; when first principles are learned, inspiration can guide. Centuries of taxation have taught foreigners such economy. In making soup stock, strain it, after long sim- mering, but let it cool in an open bowl. Next day, remove the cake of fat on top ; clarify it by cooking it in a pan of water. The impurities will sink to the bottom, and the fat in a solid piece can be used for frying or braising, as the flavor, in- cluding vegetables and herbs, is better tasting and more wholesome than lard. French cooks, too, take the fat from chicken broth when it cools, clarify it, then use it instead of butter for pastry or delicate frying. Fish should have a separate pan of fat, clarified after each time of using, and this, instead of being thrown away, will keep some time in a cold place. In preparing stock, cut up the meat into dice, split the bones so that the marrow will come out, and add to the nutriment, then clean and cut the vegetables with exceeding care. Potatoes should first be parboiled before using in soups or stews, as they belong to the deadly nightshade family, and the poison passes off with the first water. Onions 242 With a Saucepan over the Sea and garlic, so beloved by the French and Italians, lose their sharpness and rank flavor by parboiling. One of the best French hotels in New York, where the opera stars always go for certain country dishes, dear to their childhood, has a special sauce of garlic, for entrees, a recipe of Gascony, but so delicate, because of this first boiling, that few people can resist it. About a quart of cold water to each pound of meat, with one teaspoonful of salt added, when the stock is strained to be put away, one spoonful to each quart of stock, is the right proportion. Use as little pepper as possible. Some of our most expensive hotels ruin their cooking with too much pepper. A French cook would be offended if more pepper or salt was asked for at the table, for the proper amount should be added before serving. Cold cooked vegetables are never nice warmed up ; a foreign cook would turn the beans or peas, or whatever it is, into a cream soup, made with milk and yolk of egg, if stock is not at hand, or would use them to garnish meats, or served with mayonnaise as a mixed salad. Equal parts, say a cupful each, of peas, string beans, potatoes, carrots, or cauliflower, make a salad fit to give the most fastidious guest. Pretty garnishing of lemon or 243 With a Saucepan over the Sea parsley, hard-boiled ^gs, or any vegetable, has much to do with the looks of a dish, as well as to the taste, for the mouth literally waters when hunger is exdted by the eye or the sense of smell, and digestion is easier when food is enjoyed. The water in which vegetables or rice has been cooked — excepting potatoes and cabbage — would be used by a French cook, with additions, to make good soup; the water from boiled mutton, with herbs, onions, carrots, rice, or barley, is not bad when served as mutton broth, and the water from boiled fish, with the same seasoning, some milk and oysters, with the liquor from the oysters, and flour and butter to thicken it, results in a nice soup, richer in flavor than the usual stewed oysters. Even a chicken can be cooked with water to make soup, then taken out, stuffed in the way generally done, with bread-crumbs, etc., and dredged with flour, and basted with butter

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.