to rags and have transferred all its flavour to the liquid, which should be served up free from shreds.
This soup will be greatly improved by the addition of a few dozen ochras cut into very thin slices, and put in with the other vegetables. You may put Lima beans into it, green peas, or indeed any vegetables you like: or you may thicken it with ochras and tomatas only.
Next day, take what is left of the soup, put it into a pot, and simmer it over hot coals for half an hour: a longer time will weaken the taste. If it has been well made and kept in a cool place, it will be found better the second day than the first.
If your family is very small, and the leg of beef large and the season winter, it may furnish soup for four successive days. Cut the beef in half; make soup of the first half, in the manner above directed, and have the remainder warmed next day: then on the third day make fresh soup of the second half.
We have been minute in these directions; for if strictly followed, the soup, though plain, will be found excellent.
If you do not intend to serve up the meat separately, break to pieces all the bones with a mallet or kitchen cleaver. This, by causing them to give out their marrow, &c., will greatly enrich the liquid. Do this, of course, when you first begin the soup. It is a slovenly and vulgar practice to send soup to table with shreds of meat and bits of bone in it.
FINE BEEF SOUP.
Begin this soup the day before it is wanted. Take a good piece of fresh beef that has been newly killed: any substantial part will do that has not too much fat about it: a fore leg is very good for this purpose. Wash it well. Cut off all the meat, and break up the bones. Put the meat and the bones into a large pot, very early in the day, so as to allow eight or nine hours for its boiling. Proportion the water to the quantity of meat—about a pint and a half to each pound. Sprinkle the meat with a small quantity of pepper and salt. Pour on the water, hang it over a moderate fire, and boil it slowly: carefully skimming off all the fat that rises to the top, and keeping it closely covered, except when you raise the lid to skim it. Do not, on any account, put in additional water to this soup while it is boiling; and take care that the boiling goes steadily on, as, if it stops, the soup will be much injured. But if the fire is too great, and the soup boils too fast, the meat will become hard and tough, and will not give out its juices.
After the meat is reduced to rags, and the soup sufficiently boiled, remove the pot from the fire, and let it stand in the corner for a quarter of an hour to settle. Then take it up, strain it into a large earthen pan, cover it, and set it away in a cool dry place till next day. Straining it makes it clear and bright, and frees it from the shreds of meat and bone. If you find that it jellies in the pan, (which it will if properly made,) do not disturb it till you are ready to put it into the pot for the second boiling, as breaking the jelly may prevent it from keeping well.
On the following morning, boil separately, carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and whatever other vegetables you intend to thicken the soup with. Tomatas will greatly improve it. Prepare them by taking off the skin, cutting them into small pieces, and stewing them in their own juice till they are entirely dissolved. Put on the carrots before any of the other vegetables, as they require the longest time to boil. Or you may slice and put into the soup a portion of the vegetables you are boiling for dinner; but they must be nearly done before you put them in, as the second boiling of the soup should not exceed half an hour, or indeed, just sufficient time to heat it thoroughly.
Scrape off carefully from the cake of jellied soup whatever fat or sediment may still be remaining on it; divide the jelly into pieces, and about half an hour before it is to go to table, put it into a pot, add the various vegetables, (having first sliced them,) in sufficient quantities to make the soup very thick; hang it over the fire and let it boil slowly, or simmer steadily till dinner time. Boiling it much on the second day will destroy the flavour, and render it flat and insipid. For this reason, in making fine, clear beef soup, the vegetables are to be cooked separately. They need not be put in the first day, as the soup is to be strained; and on the second day, if put in raw, the length of time required to cook them would spoil the soup by doing it too much. We repeat, that when soup has been sufficiently boiled on the first day, and all the juices and flavour of the meat thoroughly extracted, half an hour is the utmost it requires on the second.
Carefully avoid seasoning it too highly. Soup, otherwise excellent, is frequently spoiled by too much pepper and salt. These condiments can be added at table, according to the taste of those that are eating it; but if too large a proportion of them is put in by the cook, there is then no remedy, and the soup may by some be found uneatable.
Many persons prefer boiling all the vegetables in the soup on the first day, thinking that they improve its flavour. This may be done in common soup that is not to be strained, but is inadmissible if you wish it to be very bright and clear. Also, unless you have a garden and a profusion of vegetables of your own, it is somewhat extravagant, as when strained out they are of no further use, and are therefore wasted.
MUTTON SOUP.
Cut off the shoulder part of a fore quarter of mutton, and having cut all the meat from the bone, put it into a soup pot with two quarts of water. As soon as it boils, skim it well, and then slacken the fire and simmer the meat for an hour and a half. Then take the remainder of the mutton, and put it whole into the soup-pot with sufficient boiling water to cover it well, and salt it to your taste. Skim it the moment the fresh piece of meat begins to boil, and about every quarter of an hour afterwards. It should boil slowly five hours. Prepare half a dozen turnips, four carrots,[B] and three onions, (all cut up, but not small,) and put them in about an hour and a half before dinner. You may also put in some small dumplings. Add some chopped parsley.
Cut the meat off the scrag into small pieces, and send it to table in the tureen with the soup. The other half of the mutton should be served on a separate dish, with whole turnips boiled and laid round it. Many persons are fond of mutton that has been boiled in soup.
You may thicken this soup with rice or barley that has first been soaked in cold water; or with green peas; or with young corn, cut down from the cob; or with tomatas scalded, peeled, and cut into pieces.
Cabbage Soup may be made in the same manner, of neck of mutton. Omit all the other vegetables, and put in a large head of white cabbage, stripped of the outside leaves, and cut small.
Noodle Soup can be made in this manner also. Noodles are a mixture of flour and beaten egg, made into a stiff paste, kneaded, rolled out very thin, and cut into long narrow slips, not thicker than straws, and then dried three or four hours in the sun, on tin or pewter plates. They must be put in the soup shortly before dinner, as, if boiled too long they will go to pieces.
With the mutton that is taken from the soup you may send to table some suet dumplings, boiled in another pot, and served on a separate dish. Make them in the proportion of half a pound of beef suet to a pound and a quarter of flour. Chop the suet as fine as possible, rub it into the flour, and mix it into a dough with a little cold water. Roll it out thick, and cut it into dumplings about as large as the top of a tumbler, and boil them an hour.
VEAL SOUP.
