Volume 1

Cassell's dictionary of cookery : with numerous illustrations, containing about nine thousand recipes.

Date:
[1892]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cassell's dictionary of cookery : with numerous illustrations, containing about nine thousand recipes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    49/632 (page 35)
    XX3fV There ai-e several soups that wiU beai', and be very much improved by, the addition of sherry, and we would mention soup made from calves' feet or ox-feet, rdblet soup and soup made from any kind of game. A very good rough test of the value of adding sheriy to mock-turtle soup is a pastrycook's. Let any one order a basiii of soup and a glass of sheny for lunch, and add a table-spoonful of the sherry to the soup—the lesson learnt will be worth the probable eighteen-pence paid Wliile on the subject of adding wine to soups I would mention hai-e soup, which is not reaUy, or should not be, a thick soup, though of course it could not be called clear. Hare soup requires port wine, and not sherry, and of course the same observations that applied to sherry apply to the port. If you cannot afford or obtain real port, don't put in any bad wine to spoil the hare. In France Burgundy is used for dressing hare; but in England the imitation port is, if anything, a more honible compound than the imitation sherry. What the effect of adding this compoimd to hare soup would be I cannot say, beyond that it would be as certain to spoil it as an equal quantity of blacking would. Hare will bear a large quantity of port wine. One of the gi-eatest living cooks recom- mends half a bottle of port wine to one single hare. This is extravagant; but there is no doubt that the soup would be all the better for it. I would here mention the fact that whenever port \vine is used in cooking, a few cloves, a very little piece of cinnamon, and a little lemon-juice may always be added with advantage. The great secret of success in making good hare soup is rubbing the meat weU through a tamis, or wire sieve. The best part of the meat should of course be kept to add to the soup after it is made, while all the bones, &c., should be well stewed, and after the bones, which have been boiled till they are dry and white, have been taken out, all the meat and celery with which they have been boiled should be rubbed through a wire sieve with a wooden spoon. Hare soup requires no thickening. Mulligatawny soup is another not exactly thick soup, and yet not a pur^e, but a mixture of the two that we may here allude to, though perhaps a little out of its proper place. Here again the secret of success is patience in rubbing the fried onion, apples, &c., through the tamis; but we will speak of the tamis more fully when we come to Purees. There is one little point in which mul- ligatawny soup differs from others, and that is, it requires sour apples in its composition. Of course apples, especially sour ones, cannot always be obtained in spring. There are few points in which a knowledge of the principles of cookery becomes more beneficial than when such knowledge enables the cook to substitute one ingredient for another. Ingenuity on the part of the cook on this point is a cinicial test of excellence. Suppose the time of year is such that no apples can be obtained, the probability is that young green gooseberries ai-e in season; by substituting a few of these for the apples, that peculiar twang in good curry or good mulligatawny given by the apples can be obtained. With regard to thick soups in general, little need be said beyond that, as a rule, the only difference is the addition of brown or white roux. We must, however, again remind our readers, as we have done before, almost ad nauseam. of allowing the tjoup to boil and throw up the butter, which must be removed by skimming. Soups thickened by arrowroot, corn-flour, plain flour-and-water, do not require tliis skimming. The common mistake into which inexperienced cooks fall in making thick soup is making it too thick. By adding too much brown roux tlie flavour ox the soup itself is overpowered. Again, in using arrow-