Having boiled three fine middle-sized lobsters, extract all the meat from the body and claws. Bruise part of the coral in a mortar, and also an equal quantity of the meat. Mix them well together. Add mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and a little grated lemon-peel; and make them up into force-meat balls, binding the mixture with the yolk of an egg slightly beaten.

Take three quarts of the veal broth, and put into it the meat of the lobsters cut into mouthfuls. Boil it together about twenty minutes. Then thicken it with the remaining coral, (which you must first rub through a sieve,) and add the force-meat balls, and a little butter rolled in flour. Simmer it gently for ten minutes, but do not let it come to a boil, as that will injure the colour. Pour it into a tureen, and send it to table immediately.

OYSTER SOUP.

To two quarts of oysters add a pint of water, and let them set an hour. Then take them out of the liquor. Grate and roll fine a dozen crackers. Put them into the liquor with a large lump of fresh butter. When the grated biscuit has quite dissolved, add a quart of milk with a grated nutmeg, and a dozen blades of mace; and, if in season, a head of celery split fine and cut into small pieces. Season it to your taste with pepper.

Mix the whole together, and set it in a closely covered vessel over a slow fire. When it comes to a boil, put in the oysters; and when it comes to a boil again, they will be sufficiently done.

Before you send it to table put into the tureen some toasted bread cut into small squares, omitting the crust.

PLAIN OYSTER SOUP.

Take two quarts of large oysters. Strain their liquor into a soup pan; season it with a tea-spoonful of whole pepper, a tea-spoonful of whole allspice, the same quantity of whole cloves, and seven or eight blades of mace. If the oysters are fresh, add a large tea-spoonful of salt; if they are salt oysters, none is requisite. Set the pan on hot coals, and boil it slowly (skimming it when necessary) till you find that it is sufficiently flavoured with the taste of the spice. In the mean time (having cut out the hard part) chop the oysters fine, and season them with a powdered nutmeg. Take the liquor from the fire, and strain out the spice from it. Then return it to the soup pan, and put the chopped oysters into it, with whatever liquid may have continued about them. Add a quarter of a pound of butter, divided into little bits and rolled in flour. Cover the pan, and let it boil hard about five minutes. If oysters are cooked too much they become tough and tasteless.

CLAM SOUP.

Having put your clams into a pot of boiling water to make them open easily, take them from the shells, carefully saving the liquor. To the liquor of a quart of opened clams, allow three quarts of water. Mix the water with the liquor of the clams and put it into a large pot with a knuckle of veal, the bone of which should be chopped in four places. When it has simmered slowly for four hours, put in a large bunch of sweet herbs, a beaten nutmeg, a tea-spoonful of mace, and a table-spoonful of whole pepper, but no salt, as the salt of the clam liquor will be sufficient. Stew it slowly an hour longer, and then strain it. When you have returned the liquor to the pot, add a quarter of a pound of butter divided into four and each bit rolled in flour. Then put in the clams, (having cut them, in pieces,) and let it boil fifteen minutes. Send it to table with toasted bread in it cut into dice.