RECIPES FOR COOKING COMMON FOODS PART 4

MAKING GOOD SOUPS.

_Vegetable Soups._--The simplest and most easily prepared soups are those
made from peas, beans, tomatoes, asparagus, celery, carrots, onions, and
potatoes. They require neither meat nor any previous preparation, but can
be made and eaten at once. These soups are somewhat paradoxical because
they are both cheap and rich; deliciously simple and simply delicious.
Take enough of any of these vegetables to furnish sufficient soup after
they have been rubbed through a strainer and thinned with milk or cream.
Cook the vegetables thoroughly until perfectly soft, so that they can be
easily rubbed through a coarse strainer. Add enough milk to this purée to
make it about the thickness of cream. Season with salt, pepper, and a
little celery-salt, and serve with bits of bread browned crisp in the
oven.

When the vegetables can be got fresh from the garden nothing is more
delicious than these soups, and in winter, canned peas and dried beans
make excellent substitutes. In making potato purée two onions boiled with
the potatoes improve the flavor. Potato soup without onion is tasteless;
a little celery boiled in with the potatoes and onion, makes it still
nicer. Tomato soup is also better slightly flavored with onion and a
little carrot. A little cold boiled rice, simmered for a half-hour in the
soup after the milk has been added, is an excellent addition. These soups
are also delicious when made rather thin with milk and then thickened by
putting the well-beaten yolks of two eggs into the hot soup-tureen, and
stirring vigorously while adding the soup; this last soup must be served
at once, as it cannot stand after the eggs are added.

_Meat Soups._--These soups should always be made the day before required
in order to thoroughly remove the fat, which cannot be done until it
hardens on the top of the soup. Nothing is more disgusting than greasy
soup. The foundation for an infinite variety of soups is made by boiling
about a pound of meat in three pints of water. After the meat is cooked
to pieces strain it out and keep the well-skimmed liquor, or "stock," as
it is called, in a stone jar in a cool place. It should form a jelly, and
in order to prepare a different soup for each day, it is only necessary
to heat some of the jelly and flavor it differently. For instance: Chop
fine one small onion to each person and fry it in butter, or in some of
the grease taken off the soup, until tender and slightly brown. Pour over
enough stock and let stand for half an hour. Serve with a little grated
cheese. Cabbage soup is made in the same way except that it takes longer
to cook the cabbage. Instead of one vegetable several may be used.
Turnips, cabbage, onions, and carrots in about the same proportion,
chopped fine and fried tender, without any water, and added to the soup,
make what is known in France as Julienne soup.