Seasoning for Soups and Brown Sauces.
Salt a bullock’s liver, pressing it thoroughly with a great weight for four days. Take ginger and every sort of spice that is used to meat, and half a pound of brown sugar, a good quantity of saltpetre, and a pound of juniper-berries. Rub the whole in thoroughly, and let it lie six weeks in the liquor, boiling and skimming every three days, for an hour or two, till the liver becomes as hard as a board. Then steep it in the smoke liquor that is used for hams, and afterwards hang it up to smoke for a considerable time. When used, cut slices as thin as a wafer, and stew them down with the jelly of which you make your sauce or soup, and it will give a delightful flavour.
Soup. No. 1.
A quarter of a pound of portable soup, that is, one cake, in two quarts of boiling water; vegetables to be stewed separately, and added after the soup is dissolved.
Soup. No. 2.
Take a piece of beef about a stone weight, and a knuckle of veal, eight or ten onions, a bunch of thyme and parsley, an ounce of allspice, ten cloves, some whole pepper and salt; boil all these till the meat is all to pieces. Strain and take off the fat. Make about a quart of brown beef gravy with some of your broth; then take half a pound of butter and a good handful of flour mixed together, put it into a stewpan, set it over a slow fire, keeping it stirring till very brown; have ready what herbs you design for your soup, either endive or celery; chop them, but not too small; if you wish for a fine soup add a palate and sweetbreads, the palate boiled tender, and the sweetbreads fried, and both cut into small pieces. Put these, with herbs, into brown butter; put in as much of your broth as you intend for your soup, which must be according to the size of your dish. Give them a boil or two, then put in a quart of your gravy, and put all in a pot, with a fowl, or what you intend to put in your dish. Cover it close, and, let it boil an hour or more on a slow fire. Should it not be seasoned enough, add more salt, or what you think may be necessary: a fowl, or partridge, or squab pigeons, are best boiled in soup and to lie in the dish with it.
Soup. No. 3.
Cut three pounds of beef and one pound of veal in slices and beat it. Put half a pound of butter and a piece of bacon in your pan, brown it, and sprinkle in half a spoonful of flour. Cut two onions in; add pepper and salt, a bit of mace, and some herbs, then put in your meat, and fry it till it is brown on both sides. Have in readiness four quarts of boiling water, and a saucepan that will hold both water and what is in your frying-pan. Cover it close; set it over a slow fire and stew it down, till it is wasted to about five pints; then strain it off, and add to it what soup-herbs you like, according to your palate. Celery and endive must be first stewed in butter; and peas and asparagus first boiled, and well drained from the butter, before you put it to the soup. Stew it some time longer, and skim off all the fat; then take a French roll, which put in your soup-dish; pour in your soup, and serve it up. Just before you take it off the fire, squeeze in the juice of a lemon.
If veal alone is used, and fowl or chicken boiled in it and taken out when enough done, and the liquor strained, and the fowl or chicken put to the clear liquor, with vermicelli, you will have a fine white soup; and the addition of the juice of a lemon is a great improvement.
The French cooks put in chervil and French turnips, lettuce, sorrel, parsley, beets, a little bit of carrot, a little of parsnips, this last must not boil too long—all to be strained off: to be sent up with celery, endive (or peas) or asparagus, and stuffed cucumbers.