Mrs. Lincoln's Boston cook book

of a dark brown color. Add one cup of boiling water; simmer ten minutes, and bottle when cool. This should always be kept on hand, as it is useful for many purposes. It gives a rich, dark color to soups, coffee, and jelly ; is more wholesome than browned butter in sauces, and is delicious as a flavoring in custards and pudding sauces. Glaze. Glaze is simply clear stock boiled down to one fourth of its original amount. Put two quarts of rich, strong stock into a saucepan, and boil it uncovered until reduced to one pint. It should have a gluey consistency, and will keep a month if put in a closely covered jar in a cool place. It is useful in browning meats which have not been colored by cooking, but which we wish to have the appearance of having been roasted or browned. Thickening for Soups. Soups are thickened with flour, cornstarch, or rice flour : one tablespoonful for a quart of soup, — heaping, if flour ; scant, if rice flour or cornstarch. Flour is the cheapest, but cornstarch gives a smoother consistency Mix the flour with a very little cold water or milk until it is a smooth paste ; then add more liquid, until it can be poured easily into the boiling soup. Remember to boil the soup fifteen or twenty minutes after the thickening is added, that there may be no raw taste of the flour. Where butter and flour are used, the butter is rubbed to a cream, mixed or blended with the flour, and then made into a paste with a little of the soup. A better way is to put the butter in a small saucepan, and when melted and bubbling stir in the flour quickly until smooth (be careful not to brown butter for any white soup) ; then add gradually about a cup of the hot soup, letting it boil and thicken as you add the soup. It should be thin enough to pour. In vegetable soups or purees, as soon as the hot butter and flour are blended, The Boston Cook Booh. they may be stirred at once into the soup. This is what is meant in many of the receipts by thickening with butter and flour which have been cooked together. The hot butter cooks the flour more thoroughly than it can be cooked in any other way. When a brown thickening is desired, as in Mock Turtle Soup, melt the butter and let it become as brown as it will without burning ; then add all the flour at once and stir quickly, that every particle of it may be moistened in the hot butter ; add the water or soup gradually Flour that is browned while dry, either in the oven or over the fire, colors, but does not thicken. A certain amount of moisture, of either fat or water, is necessary with the heat to thoroughly swell the grains of starch in the flour. Thickened soups should be about the consistency of good cream. Purees are thicker. Material to be served with Soup. Croutons, or Fried Bread, No, 1. — Cut stale bread into half-inch slices, remove the crusts, and cut into half-inch cubes ; put them in a frying-basket, plunge into fat hot enough to brown them while you count forty ; drain and sprinkle with salt. They may be fried at any time and heated in the oven just before serving. They are especially nice with pea and bean soup. No. 2. — Cut the bread into cubes, and brown in butter in an omelet pan ; or butter first, then cut into cubes and brown in the oven. Thej^ are best when prepared after the first receipt.