Soups.
Many cases of ill-health demand that the meals should be as dry as possible. Having granted this, it will be admitted that there is quite a proper place for soups in ordinary everyday food reform catering.
The chief objection to ordinary soups is that they are made on a basis of meat stock and flavoured with one of various “meat extract” preparations. Meat stock, meat gravy and meat extract all alike represent the least desirable elements in flesh food, namely, the acids and tissue-wastes of the living animal at the moment of its death—acids and tissue-debris which were on their way to normal excretion via the lymph channels, veins, etc.
It is therefore only common-sense to avoid such soup-bases, especially as the most excellent soups can be made without recourse to any animal product.
The juices of vegetables, being rich in alkaline “salts” and other organic elements, are the natural cleansing agents in a rational diet. Hence to obtain a maximum remedial effect, vegetable soup should be taken in the form of a clear, unflavoured broth, quite apart from the solid meals, and preferably on retiring. But for the dinner or supper soup, some richness of flavour and creaminess of substance are pleasing and legitimate.
The following recipes explain, first, how to prepare vegetable “stock,” and then how to make rich, creamy nourishing soups, on the basis of that “stock.” Each recipe will, of course, suggest variations.