If you like a thickened soup, put three table-spoonfuls of the fat you have taken off the soup into a small stew-pan, and mix it with four table-spoonfuls of flour, pour a ladleful of soup to it, and mix it with the rest by degrees, and boil it up till it is smooth.
Cut the meat and gristle of the knuckle and the bacon into mouthfuls, and put them into the soup, and let them get warm.
Obs. You may make this more savoury by adding catchup ([No. 439]), &c. Shin of beef may be dressed in the same way; see Knuckle of Veal stewed with Rice ([No. 523]).
Mutton Broth.—(No. 194.)
Take two pounds of scrag of mutton; to take the blood out, put it into a stew-pan, and cover it with cold water; when the water becomes milk-warm, pour it off; then put it in four or five pints of water, with a tea-spoonful of salt, a table-spoonful of best grits, and an onion; set it on a slow fire, and when you have taken all the scum off, put in two or three turnips; let it simmer very slowly for two hours, and strain it through a clean sieve.
This usual method of making mutton broth with the scrag, is by no means the most economical method of obtaining it; for which see Nos. [490] and [564].
Obs. You may thicken broth by boiling with it a little oatmeal, rice, Scotch or pearl barley; when you make it for a sick person, read the Obs. on Broths, &c. in the last page of the [7th chapter] of the Rudiments of Cookery, and [No. 564].
Mock Mutton Broth, without Meat, in five minutes.—(No. 195.)
Boil a few leaves of parsley with two tea-spoonfuls of mushroom catchup, in three-quarters of a pint of very thin gruel[197-*] ([No. 572]). Season with a little salt.
Obs. This is improved by a few drops of eschalot wine ([No. 402]), and the same of essence of sweet herbs ([No. 419]). See also Portable Soup ([No. 252]).