A Soup Maigre (without Meat).
Twelve mealy potatoes, peeled and sliced.
One quart of tomatoes—canned or fresh.
One half of an onion.
Two stalks of celery.
One tablespoonful of minced parsley.
Four tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up and rolled in flour.
One tablespoonful of cornstarch wet and dissolved in cold water.
One lump of white sugar.
Three quarts of cold water will be needed.
Parboil the sliced potatoes fifteen minutes in enough hot water to cover them well. Drain this off and throw it away. Put potatoes, tomatoes, onion, celery and parsley on in three quarts of cold water, and cook gently two hours.
Then rub them all through a colander, return the soup to the pot, drop in the sugar, season to taste with pepper and salt, boil up once and take off the scum before adding the floured butter, and when this is dissolved, the cornstarch.
Stir two minutes over the fire, and your soup is ready for the table. Very good it will prove, too, if the directions be exactly followed.
When celery is out of season, you can use instead of it, a little essence of celery, or, what is better, celery salt.
10
MEATS.
ONE of the most comico-pathetico true stories I know is that of a boy, the youngest of a large family, who, having always sat at the second table, knew nothing experimentally of the choicer portions of chicken or turkey. Being invited out to dinner as the guest of a playmate, he was asked, first of all present, “what part of the turkey he preferred.”
“The carker” (carcass), “and a little of the stuff” (stuffing), “if you please,” replied the poor little fellow, with prompt politeness.
It was his usual ration, and in his ignorance, he craved nothing better.
The pupil in cookery who enjoys tossing up entrées, and devising dainty rechauffés, but cannot support the thought of handling raw chickens and big-boned joints of butcher’s meat, is hardly wiser than he.
It is a common fallacy to believe that this branch of the culinary art is uninteresting drudgery, fit only for the hands of the very plain hired cook.
Another mistake, almost as prevalent, lies in supposing that she can, of course, perform the duty properly. There is room for intelligent skill in so simple a process as roasting a piece of meat, nor is the task severe or repulsive. Practically, it is far more important to know how to do this well, than to be proficient in cake, jelly, and pudding making.