Always use soft water for making soup, and be careful to proportion the quantity of water to that of the meat. Somewhat less than a quart of water to a pound of meat, is a good rule for common soups. Rich soups, intended for company, may have a still smaller allowance of water. Soup should always be made entirely of fresh meat that has not been previously cooked. An exception to this rule may sometimes be made in favour of the remains of a piece of roast beef that has been very much under-done in roasting. This may be added to a good piece of raw meat. Cold ham, also, may be occasionally put into white soups. Soup made of cold meat has always a vapid, disagreeable taste, very perceptible through all the seasoning, and which nothing indeed can disguise. Also, it will be of a bad, dingy colour. The juices of the meat having been exhausted by the first cooking, the undue proportion of watery liquid renders it, for soup, indigestible and unwholesome, as well as unpalatable. As there is little or no nutriment to be derived from soup made with cold meat, it is better to refrain from using it for this purpose, and to devote the leavings of the table to some other object. No person accustomed to really good soup, made from fresh meat, can ever be deceived in the taste, even when flavoured with wine and spices. It is not true that French cooks have the art of producing excellent soups from cold scraps. There is much bad soup to be found in France, at inferior houses; but good French cooks are not, as is generally supposed, really in the practice of concocting any dishes out of the refuse of the table. And we repeat, that cold meat, even when perfectly good, and used in a large quantity, has not sufficient substance to flavour soup, or to render it wholesome. Soup, however, that has been originally made of raw meat entirely, is frequently better the second day than the first; provided that it is re-boiled only for a very short time, and that no additional water is added to it. Unless it has been allowed to boil too hard, so as to exhaust the water, the soup-pot will not require replenishing. When it is found absolutely necessary to do so, the additional water must be boiling hot when poured in; if lukewarm or cold, it will entirely spoil the soup. Every particle of fat should be carefully skimmed from the surface. Greasy soup is disgusting and unwholesome. The lean of meat is much better for soup than the fat. Long and slow boiling is necessary to extract the strength from the meat. If boiled fast over a large fire, the meat becomes hard and tough, and will not give out its juices. Potatoes, if boiled in the soup, are thought by some to render it unwholesome, from the opinion that the water in which potatoes have been cooked is almost a poison. As potatoes are a part of every dinner, it is very easy to take a few out of the pot in which they have been boiled by themselves, and to cut them up and add them to the soup just before it goes to table. The cook should season the soup but very slightly with salt and pepper. If she puts in too much, it may spoil it for the taste of most of those that are to eat it; but if too little, it is easy to add more to your own plate. The practice of thickening soup by stirring flour into it is not a good one, as it spoils both the appearance and the taste. If made with a sufficient quantity of good fresh meat, and not too much water, and if boiled long and slowly, it will have substance enough without flour.
Fish for nearly all dishes is better if boned before cooking; it is also economy to do this, as the bones can then be used for stock for fish soups. These soups, although not well known here at present, are a valuable food; they are easy to make, wholesome, and nourishing. After the fillets of fish have been removed, directions for which are given amongst the fish recipes, take the bones, wash them well in cold water, and cut away any black substance that may be adhering to them. Break them up and put into a saucepan with a teaspoonful of salt; when it boils remove the scum and put in one dozen white peppercorns, a fagot of herbs, one onion, and one carrot; boil steadily for two hours or longer, strain through a sieve into a basin, and it is ready for use.
Sift together flour, salt and baking powder; rub in shortening; add milk, and mix with spoon to smooth dough easy to handle on floured board. Turn out dough; knead quickly a few times to impart smoothness; divide into small pieces: form each by hand into short, rather thick tapering rolls; place on greased pans and allow to stand in warm place 15 to 20 minutes; brush with milk. Bake in very hot oven. When almost baked brush again with melted butter. Bake 10 minutes longer and serve hot. If a glazed finish is desired, before taking from oven brush over with yolk of egg which has been mixed, with a little cold water.
These rolls make excellent sandwiches, using for fillings either lettuce and mayonnaise, sliced or chopped ham, chopped seasoned cucumbers, egg and mayonnaise with a very little chopped onion and parsley, or other filling desired.
This soup will require eight hours to prepare. Take a large calf's head, and having cleaned, washed, and soaked it, put it into a pot with a knuckle of veal, and the hock of a ham, or a few slices of bacon; but previously cut off and reserve enough of the veal to make two dozen small force-meat balls. Put the head and the other meat into as much water as will cover it very well, so that it may not be necessary to replenish it: this soup being always made very rich. Let it boil slowly four hours, skimming it carefully. As soon as no more scum rises, put in six potatoes, and three turnips, all sliced thin; with equal proportions of parsley, sweet marjoram and sweet basil, chopped fine; and pepper and salt to your taste. An hour before you send the meat to table, make about two dozen small force-meat balls of minced veal and beef-suet in equal quantities, seasoned with pepper and salt; sweet herbs, grated lemon-peel, and powdered nutmeg and mace. Add some beaten yolk of egg to make all these ingredients stick together. Flour the balls very well, and fry them in butter. Before you put them into the soup, take out the head, and the other meat. Cut the meat from the head in small pieces, and return it to the soup. When the soup is nearly done, stir in half a pint of Madeira. Have ready at least a dozen egg-balls made of the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, grated or pounded in a mortar, and mixed with a little flour and sufficient raw yolk of egg to bind them. Make them up into the form and size of boy's marbles. Throw them into the soup at the last, and also squeeze in the juice of a lemon. Let it get another slow boil, and then put it into the tureen. We omit a receipt for real turtle soup, as when that very expensive, complicated, and difficult dish is prepared in a private family, it is advisable to hire a first-rate cook for the express purpose. An easy way is to get it ready made, in any quantity you please, from a turtle-soup house.
Put six eggs in a baking-dish and cover them with boiling water; put a cover on and let them stand where they will keep hot, but not cook, for ten minutes, or, if the family likes them well done, twelve minutes. They will be perfectly cooked, but not tough, soft and creamy all the way through.
Another way to cook them is this:
Put the eggs in a kettle of cold water on the stove, and the moment the water boils take them up, and they will be just done. An easy way to take them up all at once is to put them in a wire basket, and sink this under the water. A good way to serve boiled eggs is to crumple up a fresh napkin in a deep dish, which has been made very hot, and lay the eggs in the folds of the napkin; this prevents their breaking, and keeps them warm.
Good mushrooms are only found in clear open fields where the air is pure and unconfined. Those that grow in low damp ground, or in shady places, are always poisonous. Mushrooms of the proper sort generally appear in August and September, after a heavy dew or a misty night. They may be known by their being of a pale pink or salmon colour on the gills or under side, while the top is of a dull pearl-coloured white; and by their growing only in open places. When they are a day old, or a few hours after they are gathered, the reddish colour changes to brown. The poisonous or false mushrooms are of various colours, sometimes of a bright yellow or scarlet all over; sometimes entirely of a chalky white stalk, top, and gills. It is easy to detect a bad mushroom if all are quite fresh; but after being gathered a few hours the colours change, so that unpractised persons frequently mistake them. It is said that if you boil an onion among mushrooms the onion will turn of a bluish black when there is a bad one among them. Of course, the whole should then be thrown into the fire. If in stirring mushrooms, the colour of the silver spoon is changed, it is also most prudent to destroy them all.
For nut-cookery, a nut mill or food chopper of some kind is necessary. A tiny food chopper, which can be regulated to chop finely or coarsely as required, may be bought for 3s. at most food-reform stores. It also has an attachment which macerates the nuts so as to produce "nut butter." The larger size at 5s. is the more convenient for ordinary use. If only one machine can be afforded, the food chopper should be the one chosen, as it can also be used for vegetables, breadcrumbs, etc. The nut-mill proper flakes the nuts, it will not macerate them, and is useful for nuts only. But flaked nuts are a welcome and pretty addition to fruit salads, stewed fruits, etc. If the nuts to be milled or ground clog the machine, put them in a warm oven until they just begin to change colour. Then let them cool, and they will be found crisp and easy to work. But avoid doing this if possible, as it dries up the valuable nut oil.
These little fish are really not broiled at all, but that is the name of the nice and easy dish. Take a box of large sardines and drain off all the oil, and lay them on heavy brown paper while you make four slices of toast. Trim off the edges and cut them into strips, laying them in a row on a hot platter. Put the sardines into the oven and make them very hot, and lay one on each strip of toast and sprinkle them with lemon juice, and put sliced lemon and sprigs of parsley all around.
1 small head celery, 1 large onion, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 3 tablespoons coarsely chopped parsley, P.R. Barley malt meal, Mapleton's or P.R. almond or pine-kernel cream, 3 pints boiling water. Well wash the vegetables and slice them, and add them with the parsley to the boiling water. (The water should be distilled, if possible, and the cooking done in a large earthenware jar or casserole. See notes re casseroles in Chap. IV.) Simmer gently for 2 hours, or until quite soft. Then strain through a hair sieve. Do not rub the vegetables through the sieve to make a puree, simply strain and press all the juices out. The vegetable juices are all wanted, but not the fibre. To each pint of this vegetable broth allow 1 heaped tablespoon barley malt meal, 1 tablespoon nut cream, and 1/2 lb. tomatoes. Mix the meal to a thin paste with some of the cooled broth (from the pint). Put the rest of the pint in a saucepan or casserole and bring to the boil. Add the meal and boil for 10 minutes. Break up the tomatoes and cook slowly to a pulp (without water). Rub through a sieve. (The skin and pips are not to be forced through.) Add this pulp to the soup. Lastly mix the nut-cream to a thin cream by dripping slowly a little water or cool broth into it, stirring hard with a teaspoon all the time. Add this to the soup, re-heat, but do not boil, serve. This soup is rather irksome to make, but is intensely nourishing and easy of digestion. The pine-kernel cream is the more digestible of the two creams. Care should be taken not to cook these nut creams. If the soup is for an invalid care should also be taken that, while getting all the valuable vegetable juices, no skin or pips, etc., are included. The vegetable broth may be prepared a day in advance, but it will not keep for three days except in very cold weather. (When it is desired to keep soup it should be brought to the boil with the lid of the stockpot or casserole on, and put away without the lid being removed or the contents stirred.)
Fold a piece of strong cotton cloth (perhaps a foot square) from the opposite corners, so as to give it a triangular shape. On one side sew together the two edges, thus making a bag shaped like a "dunce's cap." Cut the cloth at the apex just enough to permit a short tin tube, somewhat like a tailor's thimble, to be pushed through. The tube for eclairs measures about three-fourths of an inch at the smallest opening; that for lady-fingers is three-eighths of an inch, and that for meringues and kisses, half an inch. The tubes for decorating with frosting are very small. Fill the bag with the mixture to be forced through, and gather the cloth together at the top with the left hand. Hold the point of the tube close to the pan on which the mixture is to be spread. Press the mixture out with the right hand. If the cakes are to be large use a good deal of pressure, but if to be small, very little will do. At first, it will be hard to get the shapes, but with a little practice it will seem comparatively easy.
