SOUPS.
The first duty of the cook or housekeeper is to have a stock made ready for soups, gravies, and sauces. On the care given to this point greatly depend the comfort and success of the dinner. I will now try to explain how, with a little care and pains, this can always be done, and the same stock used for several soups. To make—
BROWN SOUP.
Procure a nap-bone, five lbs.; have the bone well broken into very small pieces, and wash it in salt and water. Cut off the meat, and brown it in the frying-pan, with an onion. Put the nap-bone and fried meat into a convenient-sized soup-pot with eight quarts of cold water, and when it comes to the boil, set it to the side of the fire, to throw up the scum and grease; remove these as they rise, and boil slowly, with a head of celery, for six hours; then strain, and have it clear, to make the different kinds of clear soup. I will afterwards give the names of these.
For thick soups, or gravies, or sauces, put back the same meat and bones of the first stock into the pot, and put on eight quarts more of water. Boil for six hours,—longer, if it is cold weather. Vegetables, such as carrots and turnips, may be put into the stock, but not in warm weather. Strain this stock, and it will do for thick soup or purées of vegetables.
JULIENNE SOUP.
Take the red part of a carrot, part of a turnip, and the white part of a head of celery, leek, and onion; cut these into thin shreds about an inch long, and boil in a pint of water. Pour off the water from the vegetables, and add them to the clear brown soup. Season with pepper and salt, and whatever sauce is preferred.