215. French Pot-au-feu.—Out of this earthen pot comes the favorite soup and bouilli, which has been everlastingly famed as having been the support of many generations of all classes of society in France; from the opulent to the poorest individuals, all pay tribute to its excellence and worth. In fact this soup and bouilli is to the French what the roast beef and plum-pudding is on a Sunday to the English. No dinner in France is served without soup, and no good soup is supposed to be made without the pot-au-feu.
The following is the receipt:—Put in the pot-au-feu six pounds of beef, four quarts of water, set near the fire, skim; when nearly boiling add a spoonful and a half of salt, half a pound of liver, two carrots, four turnips, eight young or two old leeks, one head of celery, two onions and one burnt, with a clove in each, and a piece of parsnip, skim again, and let simmer four or five hours, adding a little cold water now and then; take off part of the fat, put slices of bread into the tureen, lay half the vegetables over, and half the broth, and serve the meat separate with the vegetables around.
Crab Soup.—We add to the list of M. Soyer’s soups, a receipt for a purely American soup, a great favorite at the South, and esteemed a great luxury by those who have eaten of it—Ed.
[Open and cleanse twelve young fat crabs (raw), and cut them into two parts; parboil and extract the meat from the claws, and the fat from the top shell. Scald eighteen ripe tomatos; skin them and squeeze the pulp from the seed, and chop it fine; pour boiling water over the seed and juice, and having strained it from the seed, use it to make the soup. Stew a short time in the soup-pot three large onions, one clove of garlic, in one spoonful of butter, two spoonfuls of lard, and then put in the tomatos, and after stewing a few minutes, add the meat from the crab claws, then the crabs, and last the fat from the back shell of the crab; sift over it grated bread-crumbs or crackers. Season with salt, Cayenne and black pepper, parsley, sweet marjoram, thyme, half teaspoonful lemon juice, and the peel of a lemon; pour in the water with which the seed were scalded, and boil it moderately one hour.
Any firm fish may be substituted for the crab.]
[FISH.]
OF all aliments that have been given to the human race for nourishment, none are more abundant or more easy of procuring than this antediluvian species, and yet of how few do we make use, and how slight is our knowledge of their habits, for it is only within the last few years that the idea was exploded that the herrings made an annual migration from the Arctic seas to deposit their spawn on the shores of the British islands. It possesses, according to its kind, a greater or less degree of nourishment, depending, like the animal, in a great measure on those beautiful meadows at the bottom of the ocean, where it feeds; for even those which live upon some of a smaller kind, as the cod on the haddock, that on the whiting, and that again on the mussel, or other crustaceous fish, which move but little from the place where they were originally spawned, derive their nourishment from the herbs and the animalculæ which those herbs produce that lay around them; the cod on the southeast of the Bank of Newfoundland is as fine again in flavor as that on the north-west side. Fish, of course, do not afford the same amount of nourishment as meat, as they contain but a slight quantity of osmazome; but its flesh is refreshing, and often exciting. A curious circumstance has been observed in respect to the animate parts of the creation which draw their nourishment from fish, as in birds and the human race, that they produce more females when doing so than males.
It ought to be made an article of diet more often than it is, as the particles it contains tend to purify the blood from the grossness it receives in partaking of animal food; and when taken at the commencement of dinner, tends to assist the digestion of those substances which form the more substantial part of the meal.
In the receipts will be found those which I consider fit for the table; but, as a general rule to be observed, as in the feathered tribe, all those of beautiful variegated colors are more unfit to eat than any other; as if the great Creator of all, in order to please man, had destined some for his nourishment, and others to gratify his senses by their melodious notes and beautiful plumage.
Nothing indicates its freshness so well as fish; the merest novice ought to know it; their gills should be difficult to open, be red, and swell well; fins tight and close; eyes bright, and not sunk: the contrary to this denotes their being stale.