Take a fore-leg of beef, and cut it up into small pieces. Put the meat with the bones into a soup-pot, and cover it with a gallon of water. Season it with pepper, and a little salt. Boil and skim it well. Have ready half a peck of ripe tomatas cut up small; and when the soup is boiling thoroughly, put them in with all their juice. Add six onions sliced, and some crusts of bread cut small. The soup must then be boiled slowly for six hours or more. When done, strain it through a cullender. Put into the tureen some pieces of bread cut into dice or small squares, and pour the soup upon it.
Tomata soup (like most others) is best when made the day before. In this case you may boil it longer and slower. Then having strained it into a stone jar, cover it closely, and set it away in a cold place. Next day, add some grated bread-crumbs mixed with a little butter, and give the soup a boil up.
When ochras are in season, this soup will be greatly improved by the addition of half a peck of ochras, peeled and sliced thin.
CALVES' FEET SOUP.—
Take eight calves' feet (two sets) and season them with a small tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of cayenne, and half a tea-spoonful of black pepper, all mixed together and rubbed over the feet. Slice a quarter of a peck of ochras, and a dozen onions, and cut up a quarter of a peck of tomatas without skinning them. Put the whole into a soup-pot with four quarts of water, and boil and skim it during two hours. Then take out the calves' feet, and put them on a dish. Next, strain the soup through a cullender, into an earthen pan, and with the back of a short wooden ladle mash out into the pan of soup all the liquid from the vegetables, till they are as dry as possible. Cut off all the meat nicely from the bones into small bits, and return it to the soup, adding a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, divided into four, and rolled in flour. Put the soup again into the pot, and give it a boil up. Toast two or three large thick slices of bread; cut it into small square dice or mouthfuls; lay it in the bottom of the tureen; pour the soup over it, and put on the tureen cover immediately. This soup (which, however, can only be made when tomatas and ochras are in season) will be found excellent. It may be greatly improved by boiling in it the hock of a cold ham: in which case add no salt.
FINE CALVES' HEAD SOUP.—
Boil in as much water as will cover it, a calf's head with the skin on, till you can slip out the bones. Then take a fore-leg of beef, and a knuckle of veal; cut them up, and put them (bones and all) into the liquid the calf's head was boiled in; adding as much more water as will cover the meat. Skim it well; and after it has thoroughly come to a boil, add half a dozen sliced carrots; half a dozen sliced onions; a large head of celery cut small; a bunch of sweet herbs; and a salt-spoonful of cayenne pepper. Boil the whole slowly during five hours; then strain it into a large pan.
Take rather more than a pint of the liquid, (after all the fat has been carefully skimmed off,) and put it into a saucepan with two ounces of fresh butter, a bunch of sweet marjoram, a few sprigs of parsley, two onions minced fine, and a large slice of the lean of some cold boiled ham, cut into little bits. Keep it closely covered, and let it simmer over the fire for an hour. Then press it through a sieve into the pan that contains the rest of the soup. Thicken it with a large tea-cupful (half a pint) of grated bread-crumbs; return it to the soup-pot, and boil it half an hour. Unless your dinner hour is late, it is best to make this soup the day before, putting it into a large stoneware or china vessel, (not an earthen one,) covering it closely and setting it in a cool place.
Have ready some force-meat balls, made of the meat of the calves' head, finely minced, and mixed with grated bread-crumbs, butter, powdered sweet-majoram, a very little salt and pepper, and some beaten yolk of egg to cement these ingredients together. Each ball should be rolled in flour, and fried in fresh butter before it is put into the soup. Shortly before you send it to table, add a large lemon sliced thin without peeling, and a pint of good madeira or sherry, wine of inferior quality being totally unfit for soup, terrapin, or any such purposes. Add also the yolks of some hard-boiled eggs cut in half. Then, after the wine, lemon, and eggs are all in, give the soup one boil up, but not more.