I conclude these remarks with observing, that some persons imagine that soup tends to relax the stomach. So far from being prejudicial, we consider the moderate use of such liquid nourishment to be highly salutary. Does not our food and drink, even though cold, become in a few minutes a kind of warm soup in the stomach? and therefore soup, if not eaten too hot, or in too great a quantity, and of proper quality, is attended with great advantages, especially to those who drink but little.
Warm fluids, in the form of soup, unite with our juices much sooner and better than those that are cold and raw: on this account, RESTORATIVE SOUP is the best food for those who are enfeebled by disease or dissipation, and for old people, whose teeth and digestive organs are impaired.
“Half subtilized to chyle, the liquid food
Readiest obeys th’ assimilating powers.”
After catching cold, in nervous headaches, cholics, indigestions, and different kinds of cramp and spasms in the stomach, warm broth is of excellent service.
After intemperate feasting, to give the stomach a holyday for a day or two by a diet on mutton broth ([No. 564], or [No. 572]), or vegetable soup ([No. 218]), &c. is the best way to restore its tone. “The stretching any power to its utmost extent weakens it. If the stomach be every day obliged to do as much as it can, it will every day be able to do less. A wise traveller will never force his horse to perform as much as he can in one day upon a long journey.”—Father Feyjoo’s Rules, p. 85.
To WARM SOUPS, &c. ([No. 485].)
N.B. With the PORTABLE SOUP ([No. 252]), a pint of broth may be made in five minutes for threepence.
[89-*] We prefer the form of a stew-pan to the soup-pot; the former is more convenient to skim: the most useful size is 12 inches diameter by 6 inches deep: this we would have of silver, or iron, or copper, lined (not plated) with silver.
[89-†] This may be always avoided by browning your meat in the frying-pan; it is the browning of the meat that destroys the stew-pan.
[90-*] In general, it has been considered the best economy to use the cheapest and most inferior meats for soup, &c., and to boil it down till it is entirely destroyed, and hardly worth putting into the hog-tub. This is a false frugality: buy good pieces of meat, and only stew them till they are done enough to be eaten.