Parboil the sliced potatoes fifteen minutes in enough hot water to cover them well. Drain this off and throw it away. Put potatoes, tomatoes, onion, celery and parsley on in three quarts of cold water, and cook gently two hours.
Then rub them all through a colander, return the soup to the pot, drop in the sugar, season to taste with pepper and salt, boil up once and take off the scum before adding the floured butter, and when this is dissolved, the cornstarch.
Stir two minutes over the fire, and your soup is ready for the table. Very good it will prove, too, if the directions be exactly followed.
When celery is out of season, you can use instead of it, a little essence of celery, or, what is better, celery salt.
10
MEATS.
ONE of the most comico-pathetico true stories I know is that of a boy, the youngest of a large family, who, having always sat at the second table, knew nothing experimentally of the choicer portions of chicken or turkey. Being invited out to dinner as the guest of a playmate, he was asked, first of all present, “what part of the turkey he preferred.”
“The carker” (carcass), “and a little of the stuff” (stuffing), “if you please,” replied the poor little fellow, with prompt politeness.
It was his usual ration, and in his ignorance, he craved nothing better.