Bean soup
Soak three cupfuls of dried white beans for eight hours. Drain, cover them with two quarts of boiling water, and boil until the beans are tender and broken to pieces. Rub them and the water in which they have been boiled through a sieve and return to the fire. Add a quart of stock, in which a ham or a piece of corn beef has been boiled. If this is too salt, add other soup stock with it. Boil for an hour, season to taste; stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in one of flour and put into the tureen. Put a handful of croutons or dice of fried bread on the surface of the soup.
Mock-turtle bean soup
Make as you would white bean soup, adding, at the last, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in one of browned flour, and when it has boiled one minute, a glass of sherry.
Have in the tureen three tablespoonfuls of hard-boiled egg, cut into dice, and a lemon, peeled and sliced as thin as paper. It is a surprisingly good imitation of mock turtle soup.
Bean and tomato soup
Soak a quart of beans for eight hours. Drain and soak an hour longer in warm water. Drain and put into a soup pot with a gallon of cold water, and bring slowly to a boil. Add a half pound of fat salt pork, chopped, two sliced onions and a bay leaf. Let all simmer gently for four hours. At the end of that time run and press the soup through a sieve, and return it to the pot with a quart of canned tomatoes seasoned, and sweetened with two teaspoonfuls of granulated sugar. Boil for half an hour, strain the soup through a colander and return to the fire, while you thicken it with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into the same quantity of butter. Boil up once and serve.
Split pea soup
This soup may be made of dried split green or yellow peas. Soak a large cupful of the peas all night, drain, cover with two quarts of water and bring to a boil. Simmer gently until the peas are soft, then rub through a colander and return to the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter and season with pepper, celery, salt and onion juice. Stir until very smooth, turn into a heated tureen, throw in a handful of dice of fried bread and serve.