Harper's cook book encyclopædia

Potage a la Reine. — This is a delicate white soup. Skin and wash carefully three young chickens or two large fowls, and boil them in five pints of good, nicely flavored veal stock for about an hour. Lift them out, pick off all the white meat, put the bodies of the fowls again into the stewpan, and let them simmer an hour and a half longer. Season the broth with salt and cayenne, and when it is sufficiently simmered pour it out, let it cool, and thoroughly take off the fat which rises to the surface. Pound the white flesh of the birds to a perfectly smooth paste, and with it a teacupful of finely grated bread-crumbs. Mix gradually with this paste a small quantity of the boiling stock, and press it through a fine hair sieve. Add the rest of the stock, and stir the whole over a gentle fire in a clean saucepan until it boils. Add from a pint to a pint and a half of boiling cream. Serve very hot. If liked, the cream may be slightly flavored with almonds. If veal broth is not at hand, a little may be made as follows : Buy a knuckle of veal from which nearly all the meat has been cut off. Break it into small pieces, and put it into a stewpan with Yz lb. of lean ham cut up small — or a ham-bone — a small carrot, a small onion, a head of celery, a large blade of mace, a bunch of parsley, and a dozen white peppercorns. Pour over these a gallon of cold water. Bring the liquid slowly to the boil, skim very carefully, then draw the pan to the side and let the contents simmer for six or seven hours until the stock is reduced to five pints. Pour the soup out and leave it until the next day. Take the fat from the top, and pour off the soup without the settlings. Boil the fowls in this stock. If the soup is not sufficiently thick, it may be made so with a little arrow -root or ground rice. Time, about four hours. Potage a la Xavier.— Mix the wellbeaten yolks of four eggs and the white of one with three-quarters of a pint of flour. Add a little pepper and salt, the eighth part of a nutmeg, grated, and a dessert - spoonful of chopped parsley, and mix all the ingredients thoroughly. Stir in as much stock as will make the batter thin enough to pass through a colander. Boil two quarts of strained and nicely flavored stock. Put the batter into it by means of a ladle perforated with holes, and stir well as long as it is on the fire. Skim carefully. Boil a quarter of an hour longer, and serve. Potage Brunoise. — Cut into little squares of less than a quarter of an inch in size the following vegetables : 4 ozs. of the red part of carrots, 4 ozs. of turnips, 4 ozs. of leeks, 4 ozs. of the white part of celery, 4 ozs. of onions. Put these in a stewpan with 12 ozs. of butter and let them fry till they assume a red hue ; add then a pinch of powdered white sugar and one pint of broth ; let it simmer for half an hour, then pour in five and one-quarter pints of broth ; let the whole simmer for two hours ; skim, and remove the grease. Have ready 8 ozs. of cooked macaroni, vermicelli, or spaghetti, which must also have been simmered till quite tender and then drained dry. Put this in the soup tureen and pour the brunoise over it.