Harper's cook book encyclopædia

Egg Soup (Danish recipe). — Mix a dessert-spoonful of flour with a little cold milk. Then boil a pint of milk, with vanilla to flavor. Thicken it with the flour, and let it boil up; strain. Beat the yolks of two eggs, and whip the whites to snow. Pour the yolks into the thickened milk, with sugar to taste, and keep all well turned. Boil the snow in a pan of water, and send the soup to table with the boiled whites floating on the top. Serve with biscuits. This soup is good in the nursery or sick-room, being digestible and pleasant as well as nourishing. English Stew. — Stew for two hours 3 lbs. of rump of beef, cut into small pieces and free from fat, in a quart of good stock or gravy. Season with a little cayenne and salt ; then add a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, the grated rind of one large lemon, a table - spoonful of rice -flour, evenly mixed with three table-spoonfuls of mushroom catsup, or sauce to taste. Stew for a quarter of an hour, when the dish will be ready to serve. This dish may be improved by a glass or two of port or white wine, or with any well-flavored store sauce. It may be also garnished with sippets of fried bread, force-meat balls, or young cucumbers. A good cook will know how to vary English stew in twenty different ways, by introducing mushrooms, green pease, rice, half-boiled new potatoes, spring carrots, or curry powder. • Fish Curry Soup. — Put the following ingredients into a saucepan : Four onions, fried in salad oil a light brown ; add six tomatoes cut into slices, a bunch of parsley, thyme, a small onion, four cloves, etc., three bay-leaves, a wineglassful of white wine, pepper and salt ; add four tablespoonfuls of curry powder and four of flour mixed with cold veal stock, about one quart or three pints. Let the whole boil together thirty minutes ; then throw your fish in, cut in pieces or slices ; as soon as the fish is cooked, take out the bunch of herbs and serve some crusts of bread or toast in it. Any firm -fleshed fish can be used for this soup. French Beef Soup. — Cut into small pieces and remove all the fat from 3 Yz lbs. of beef, and add a large knuckle - bone that has been well broken. Cover with cold water, using five quarts at least. Heat slowly, and as soon as it is boiling skim carefully. When it has been thoroughly skimmed, add one bay-leaf, one red pepper or one dozen whole black peppers, one can of tomatoes and two leeks, a few cloves, and one large onion, fried. Simmer three to four hours. Before taking it from the fire add two teaspoonfuls of salt, and put in two lumps of sugar burned in a large spoon. Let the soup boil rapidly one minute and then strain. French Vegetable Broth. — Peel and cut into small dice a quarter of a good-sized white cabbage, a carrot, a turnip, six stalks of celery, and an onion. Put them into a frying-pan with two table - spoonfuls of butter or good dripping, cover them closely, and set them at the side of the stove for half an hour. They must cook very slowly. At the end of the halfhour pour upon them a pint of hot water, and in this let them simmer two hours, or until tender. Season then to taste with salt and pepper, add a pint more boiling water, boil up sharply, and take from the fire. Serve croutons of fried bread with this soup. Fruit Soups or Bouillons. — Put in a porcelain kettle one quart of strained Giblet Soup