Put celery, leeks, carrots, turnips, cabbage lettuce, young onions, all cut fine, with a handful of young peas: give them a scald in boiling water; put them on a sieve to drain, and then put them into a clear consommé, and let them boil slowly till the roots are quite tender. Season with a little salt. When going to table put a little crust of French roll in it.
Cod’s Head Soup.
Take six large onions, cut them in slices, and put them in a stewpan, with a quarter of a pound of the freshest butter. Set it in a stove to simmer for an hour, covered up close; take the head, and with a knife and fork pick all the fins you can get off the fish. Put this in a dish, dredge it well with flour, and let it stand. Take all the bones of the head and the remainder, and boil them on the fire for an hour, with an English pint of water. Strain off the liquor through a sieve, and put it to your onions; take a good large handful of parsley, well washed and picked clean; chop it as fine as possible; put it in the soup; let it just boil, otherwise it will make it yellow. Add a little cayenne pepper, two spoonfuls of anchovy, a little soy, a little of any sort of ketchup, and a table-spoonful of vinegar. Then put the fish that has been set aside on the plate into the stewpan to the soup, and let it simmer for ten minutes. If not thick enough add a small piece of butter rolled in flour.
Crawfish Soup.
Boil off your crawfish; take the tails out of the shells; roast a couple of lobsters; beat these with your crawfish shells; put this into your fish stock, with some crusts of French rolls. Rub the whole through a tamis, and put your tails into it. You may farce a carp and put in the middle, if you please, or farce some of the shells and stick on a French roll.
Crawfish, or Lobster Soup.
Take some middling and small fishes, and put them in a gallon of water, with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, sweetherbs, and onions; boil them to pieces, and strain them out of the liquor. Then take a large fish, cut the flesh off one side, make forcemeat of it, and lay it on the fish; dredge grated bread in it, and butter a dish well; put it in the oven and bake it. Then take one hundred crawfish, break the shells of the tails and claws, take out the meat as whole as you can; pound the shells and add the spawn of a lobster pounded; put them into the soup, and, if you like, a little veal gravy; give them a boil or two together. Strain the liquor off into another saucepan, with the tops of French bread, dried, beat fine, and sifted. Give it a boil to thicken; then brown some butter, and put in the tails and claws of the crawfish, and some of the forcemeat made into balls. Lay the baked fish in the middle of the dish, pour the soup boiling hot on it; if you like, add yolks of eggs, boiled hard, pounded, and mixed by degrees with the soup.
Curry or Mulligatawny Soup.
Boil a large chicken or fowl in a pint of water till half done; add a table-spoonful of curry powder, with the juice of one lemon and a half; boil it again gently till the meat is done.
For a large party you must double the quantity of all the articles, and always proportion the water to the quantity of gravy you think the meat will yield.