General Directions for Making Soup.
Having prepared your stock according to the foregoing directions, take a sufficient quantity, when soup is required, and season, as taste may dictate, with sweet and savory herbs—salpicant, celery salt, or any other favorite seasoning—adding vegetables cut fine, and let the same boil slowly in a covered vessel until thoroughly cooked. If preferred, after seasoning the stock, it may be thickened with either barley, rice, tapioca, sago, vermicelli, macaroni, farina or rice flour. A roast onion is sometimes added to give richness and flavor. It is a well-known fact that soups properly prepared improve in flavor and are really better on the day after than when first made. By substituting different materials, garnitures, flavorings and condiments, of which an endless variety is available, the intelligent housewife may be able to furnish a different soup for every day of the year. In following these, as in all other directions for every department of cookery, experience will, after all, be found the great teacher and most valuable aid and adjunct to the learner of the art.
Calves'-Head Soup.
Take a calf's head of medium size; wash clean, and soak it an hour or more in salted water; then soak a little while in fresh, and put to boil in cold water; add a little salt and a medium-sized onion; take off the scum as it rises, and as the water boils away add a little soup stock; when quite tender take the meat from the bone, keeping the brain by itself; strain the soup, and if you think there is too much meat, use a portion as a side-dish dressed with brain sauce; do not cut the meat too fine—and season the soup with allspice, cloves and mace, adding pepper and salt to taste; put back the meat, and taking one-half the brain, a lump of butter, and a spoonful of flour, work to a thin batter, stirring in claret and sherry wines to taste, and last of all add a little extract of lemon, and one hard-boiled egg, chopped not too fine; if desirable add a few small force-meat balls.
[Turtle soup may be made in the same manner.]
Ox-Tail Soup.
Take one ox-tail and divide into pieces an inch long; 2 pounds of lean beef cut in small pieces; 4 carrots; 3 onions sliced fine; a little thyme, with pepper and salt to taste, and 4 quarts cold water; boil four hours or more, according to size of the ox-tail, and when done add a little allspice or cloves.
Okra Soup.
One large slice of ham; 1 pound of beef, veal or chicken, and 1 onion, all cut in small pieces and fried in butter together until brown, adding black or red pepper for seasoning, along with a little salt, adding in the meantime, delicately sliced thin, sufficient okra, and put all in a porcelain kettle. For a family of four use 30 pods of okra, with 2 quarts water, over a steady, but not too hot fire; boil slowly for 3 or 4 hours; when half done add 2 or 3 peeled tomatoes.