LOBSTER SOUP.
Have ready a good broth made of a knuckle of veal boiled slowly in as much water as will cover it, till the meat is reduced to rags. It must then be well strained.
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.
Season two quarts of oysters with a little cayenne. 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.
ANOTHER 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 grated nutmeg, 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, with some hard-boiled yolk of egg. 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.