Thus, as will be readily understood, we have given most important preliminary steps toward making soup. In the next article we give directions for making several kinds of soups, and thereby answer several requests in one chapter.
LXXVII.
MORE ABOUT SOUPS.
MANY suppose they can obtain just as good soup by preparing the whole between breakfast and dinner, claiming that the idea of keeping “stock” on hand is a foolish one, and an increase of the cares and labors of providing. We think this is a mistake, springing from ignorance in some cases, in others from the fact that the objectors have never tried what seems to us the better way. It is certainly the most economical, and on trial we are sure will be found a saving of time and labor, instead of an additional tax.
By allowing the material for stock to simmer slowly, one obtains the foundation for the strongest and best flavored soup which can be made from flesh. Whereas, if the meat is taken in the morning, and prepared for dinner the same day, one must hasten matters, and cannot take time to separate the meat in small pieces, or have a soup free from muddy streaks and a strong, disagreeable flavor.
Liebig objects to cooking the stock for any great length of time, because he assumes, and justly, that the albumen and fibrin which, after protracted cooking, will rise hard and bony, cannot be so thoroughly separated as not to leave some disagreeable flavor, and take away much of the real nutriment of the soup. He says if we take one pound of beef free from fat, and separate it from the bones finely, as for mince-meat or sausages; then mix it uniformly in its own weight of cold water, heat it slowly to a boiling point, and allow the liquid to boil briskly for only a few minutes; then strain through a towel to free it from the coagulated albumen and fibrin which will be mixed with it, we can, by this short boiling, secure an equal weight of the most aromatic soup or beef-tea, of such strength as cannot be obtained, even by boiling for hours, from a solid piece of flesh. Youmans says, by long boiling the rich part of the meat extracted by the cold water coagulates and becomes insoluble, instead of remaining dissolved in the soup, as it should do, in order to secure the most highly nutritious substance of the meat. A piece of flesh put into boiling water undivided is in the most unfavorable condition possible for making good soup. It is customary to protract the boiling, because it is supposed to thicken and enrich the soup.
We have no doubt, if the mistress could oversee the whole process, that a better soup would be obtained by less than the four or five hours’ cooking which we recommended in our last article for stock. But if she is obliged to commit the preparing of stock or soups to willing but careless hands, who half the time do not cut the meat up fine or crack the bones, a longer time is necessary to extract the full flavor, which will not then be as pure.
What are called clear soups should be of a light straw color, and not too strongly flavored with the meat.
White or thick soups must only be thick enough to adhere slightly to the spoon when hot.
Purée consists of vegetables or meat reduced to a very smooth pulp, and then mixed with enough stock to make a thick soup like most of the bean or pea soups.
One of the most generally palatable soups is the turtle or black bean soup, with rich beef stock for the foundation.