Obs.—Some cooks pound with the bread and chickens the yolks of three or four hard-boiled eggs, but these improve neither the colour nor the flavour of the potage.
WHITE OYSTER SOUP.
(or Oyster Soup à la Reine.)
When the oysters are small, from two to three dozens for each pint of soup should be prepared, but this number can of course be diminished or increased at pleasure. Let the fish (which should be finely conditioned natives) be opened carefully; pour the liquor from them, and strain it; rinse them in it well, and beard them; strain the liquor a second time through a lawn sieve or folded muslin, and pour it again over the oysters. Take a portion from two quarts of the palest veal stock, and simmer the beards in it from twenty to thirty minutes. Heat the soup, flavour it with mace and cayenne, and strain the stock from the oyster-beards into it. Plump the fish in their own liquor, but do not let them boil; pour the liquor to the soup, and add to it a pint of boiling cream; put the oysters into the tureen, dish the soup, and send it to table quickly. Should any thickening be required, stir briskly to the stock an ounce and a half of arrow-root entirely free from lumps, and carefully mixed with a little milk or cream; or, in lieu of this, when a rich soup is liked, thicken it with four ounces of fresh butter well blended with three of flour.
Oysters, 8 to 12 dozens; pale veal stock, 2 quarts; cream, 1 pint; thickening, 1 oz. arrow-root, or butter, 4 oz., flour, 3 oz.
RABBIT SOUP À LA REINE.
Wash and soak thoroughly three young rabbits, put them whole into the soup-pot, and pour on them seven pints of cold water or of clear veal broth; when they have stewed gently about three quarters of an hour lift them out, and take off the flesh of the backs, with a little from the legs should there not be half a pound of the former; strip off the skin, mince the meat very small, and pound it to the smoothest paste; cover it from the air, and set it by. Put back into the soup the bodies of the rabbits, with two mild onions of moderate size, a head of celery, three carrots, a faggot of savoury herbs, two blades of mace, a half-teaspoonful of peppercorns, and an ounce of salt. Stew the whole softly three hours; strain it off, let it stand to settle, pour it gently from the sediment, put from four to five pints into a clean stewpan, and mix it very gradually while hot with the pounded rabbit-flesh; this must be done with care, for if the liquid be not added in very small portions at first, the meat will gather into lumps and will not easily be worked smooth afterwards. Add as much pounded mace and cayenne as will season the soup pleasantly, and pass it through a coarse but very clean sieve; wipe out the stewpan, put back the soup into it, and stir in when it boils, a pint and a quarter of good cream[[32]] mixed with a tablespoonful of the best arrow-root: salt, if needed, should be thrown in previously.
[32]. We give this receipt exactly as we had it first compounded, but less cream and rather more arrow-root might be used for it, and would adapt it better to the economist.
Young rabbits, 3; water, or clear veal broth, 7 pints: 3/4 of an hour. Remains of rabbits; onions, 2; celery, 1 head; carrots, 3; savoury herbs; mace, 2 blades; white peppercorns, a half-teaspoonful; salt, 1 oz.: 3 hours. Soup, 4 to 5 pints; pounded rabbit-flesh, 8 oz.; salt, mace, and cayenne, if needed; cream, 1-1/4 pint; arrow-root, 1 tablespoonful (or 1-1/2 ounce).