Scotch barley broth ([No. 204]) will furnish a good dinner of soup and meat for fivepence per head, pease soup ([No. 221]) will cost only sixpence per quart, ox-tail soup ([No. 240]) or the same portable soup ([No. 252]), for fivepence per quart, and ([No. 224]) an excellent gravy soup for fourpence halfpenny per quart, duck-giblet soup ([No. 244]) for threepence per quart, and fowls’ head soup in the same manner for still less ([No. 239]), will give you a good and plentiful dinner for six people for two shillings and twopence. See also shin of beef stewed ([No. 493]), and à-la-mode beef ([No. 502]).

BROTH HERBS, SOUP ROOTS, AND SEASONINGS.

The above materials, wine, and mushroom catchup ([No. 439]), combined in various proportions, will make an endless variety[93-*] of excellent broths and soups, quite as pleasant to the palate, and as useful and agreeable to the stomach, as consuming pheasants and partridges, and the long list of inflammatory, piquante, and rare and costly articles, recommended by former cookery-book makers, whose elaborately compounded soups are like their made dishes; in which, though variety is aimed at, every thing has the same taste, and nothing its own.

The general fault of our soups seems to be the employment of an excess of spice, and too small a portion of roots and herbs.[93-†]

Besides the ingredients I have enumerated, many culinary scribes indiscriminately cram into almost every dish (in such inordinate quantities, one would suppose they were working for the asbestos palate of an Indian fire-eater) anchovies, garlic,[93-‡] bay-leaves, and that hot, fiery spice, Cayenne[93-§] pepper; this, which the French call (not undeservedly) piment enragé ([No. 404]), has, somehow or other, unaccountably acquired a character for being very wholesome; while the milder peppers and spices are cried down, as destroying the sensibility of the palate and stomach, &c., and being the source of a thousand mischiefs. We should just as soon recommend alcohol as being less intoxicating than wine.

The best thing that has been said in praise of peppers is, “that with all kinds of vegetables, as also with soups (especially vegetable soups) and fish, either black or Cayenne pepper may be taken freely: they are the most useful stimulants to old stomachs, and often supersede the cravings for strong drinks; or diminish the quantity otherwise required.” See Sir A. Carlisle on Old Age, London, 1817. A certain portion of condiment is occasionally serviceable to excite and keep up the languid action of feeble and advanced life: we must increase the stimulus of our aliment as the inirritability of our system increases. We leave those who love these things to use them as they like; their flavours can be very extemporaneously produced by chilly-juice, or essence of Cayenne ([No. 405]), eschalot wine ([No. 402]), and essence of anchovy ([No. 433]).

There is no French dinner without soup, which is regarded as an indispensable overture; it is commonly followed by “le coup d’Après,” a glass of pure wine, which they consider so wholesome after soup, that their proverb says, the physician thereby loses a fee. Whether the glass of wine be so much more advantageous for the patient than it is for his doctor, we know not, but believe it an excellent plan to begin the banquet with a basin of good soup, which, by moderating the appetite for solid animal food, is certainly a salutiferous custom. Between the roasts and the entremets they introduce “le coup du Milieu” or a small glass of Jamaica rum, or essence of punch (see [No. 471]), or Curacao ([No. 474]).

The introduction of liqueurs is by no means a modern custom: our ancestors were very fond of a highly spiced stimulus of this sort, commonly called Ipocrasse, which generally made a part of the last course, or was taken immediately after dinner.

The crafte to make ypocras.