Host and Guest

by A. V. Kirwan

Of the kinds that will keep are brown soup, hare soup, soup of game of any kind, giblet soup, and generally all soups made of the meat of animals of mature growth. Soups into which vegetables and young meats enter in any quantity, are best when fresh made, as these things have a strong tendency to ferment. This also applies to veal and fish soups. This tendency may be partly checked by boiling them up, or changing the vessels.

The best meat soups are, beyond question, those which are made from the lean alone, without much, if any, fat.

In making pea-soup with dry peas, soft water should be used; with green peas, hard water, which contributes to the preservation of their colour.

A soup should never be permitted to grow cold in the vessel in which it has been boiled. If not immediately wanted, it should be poured out into a clean pan; one made of stoneware is the best, as neither salts nor acids will act upon it, a consideration of essential importance. While cooling, the soup should not be covered over; nor indeed is it desirable to cover soup after it is cold, except with a hair sieve. It facilitates the operation, if meat for soup or gravy be cut into pieces of about half a pound each, and improves both the flavour and colour, if the meat, onions, and carrots be stewed at the bottom of the soup-pot or digester, before the water is added to it, with a bit of butter to prevent burning.

To this previous drawing out of the juices without much or any water, much of the superiority of French soups is to be attributed. Some French cooks, to regulate the flavour of soups more exactly, boil the roots, herbs, and vegetables separately to a mash, and then squeeze them and add the juice till the desired flavour is obtained.

As long boiling is necessary to make good soup, particularly where the whole or the greater part of the virtues of butchers’ meat are to be extracted, it will be necessary to add more water from time to time as it boils away; and, in order to save time, it will be best to add the water boiling, or, at least, very hot to the soup. In the addition of herbs, other vegetables, or condiments, care should be taken that they are in such quantities that no one may predominate, unless, as is sometimes the case with celery or onion, it is desired that there should be a predominancy of a particular flavour.

As celery is so generally used to flavour soups, the cook should know that, when the root is scarce, the seeds bruised and added to the soup a few minutes only before it is served up, will flavour it well; indeed the seeds will be generally found superior to the root for the purpose of flavouring. Boiling the seeds, however, for a long time, will dissipate their essential oil on which their flavour chiefly depends. This observation applies with equal force to all spices, the long boiling of which, in open vessels, must necessarily dissipate their oils in which their good qualities reside: indeed, sometimes a few drops of their essential oil, as of cinnamon or cassia, will supply the place of the spice itself.

The boiling of poultry and game in the stock-pot is a practice very common abroad. When stewed enough to be tender, they should be served immediately with a good sauce.

In regard to broths, some of the general directions concerning boiling must be carefully attended to, as well as the preceding observations on the preparation of soups. Broth may be made from the coarsest pieces of meat, and of any strength, by adapting the water to the quantity of meat, and by sufficient simmering. To make the broth good the meat should always be simmered till it is tender, and will separate without difficulty from the bones. In every case, as well of broth as of soup, in order to obtain them with the least boiling, and consequently most economically, the meat should be cut into small pieces, the bones, if large, broken, and the joints, such as those in a neck of mutton, separated, unless the meat be wanted to be served up with the broth or otherwise as a whole joint.

Broth, I may safely say, is the essence and foundation of all cookery. Among our neighbours, the French, the broth-pot, or pot-au-feu, may be said to be the substratum of the cookery of the middle and working classes. To them it yields a substantial nourishment. Any parings or trimmings of meat will serve to make the first broth, provided the scum and fat be carefully removed. If this be not sedulously attended to, the broth will be too highly coloured to mix with the sauce. Those, therefore, who are charged with the stock-pots should skim them slowly over a gentle fire, adding at intervals a little cold water, that the scum may rise more copiously. Broth should always be in the larder of a good kitchen, as it is perpetually required for sauces, braises, soups, consommés, and essences.