Take four dozen chestnuts and peel them. This will be a very long process if we attempt to take off the skins while they are raw; but in order to save time and trouble, place the chestnuts in a stew-pan with a couple of ounces of butter. Place them on a slack fire and occasionally give them a stir. Heat them gradually till the husks come off without any difficulty. Having removed all the husks, add sufficient stock or water to the chestnuts, and let them boil gently till they are tender. Then pound them in a mortar and rub them through a wire sieve. Add a very little brown roux, if the soup is to be brown, and a few drops of Parisian essence (burnt sugar), or a little white roux and a little cream if the soup is to be white. Add also a little pepper and salt, sufficient butter to make the puree taste soft, and a little powdered sugar. Fried and toasted bread should be served with the soup.
Fry four onions till they are brown. Add them to three pints of water, with four carrots, a slice of white crumb of bread, five potatoes, a celery and a bunch of parsley, which you must take out before passing the soup through the sieve. A few tomatoes make the soup better; if they are tinned, do not add them till after the soup has been passed through the tammy; if they are fresh, put them in with the other vegetables. Simmer for an hour, add pepper and salt before serving. [V. Verachtert.]
Cut up some young turnips into small pieces, throw them into boiling water, let them boil for a few minutes, take them out and strain them, and put them into a stew-pan with about two ounces of fresh butter; add a little salt and sugar. Let them stew in the butter (taking great care that they don't turn colour) till they become soft, then add sufficient boiling milk to moisten them, so that when rubbed through a wire sieve the soup will be of the consistency of pea soup. Serve fried or toasted bread with the soup.
Peel, wash, and slice up the potatoes and onions and put them into a saucepan with the butter, and stir them about till all the butter is dissolved and worked into the potatoes, but they must not get brown. Pour over the boiling water and boil until they are of a pulp, then rub them through a sieve, return to the saucepan, add the milk and seasoning, and stir till it boils. Pour into a hot tureen, and serve with fried bread.
Take three pounds of the scrag of a neck of veal, cut it into pieces, and put it with the bones (which must be broken up) into a pot with two quarts of water. Stew it till the meat is done to rags, and skim it well. Then strain it and return it to the pot. Blanch and pound in a mortar to a smooth paste, a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and mix them with the yolks of six hard boiled eggs grated, mid a pint of cream, which must first have been boiled or it will curdle in the soup. Season it with nutmeg and mace. Stir the mixture into the soup, and let it boil afterward about three minutes, stirring all the time. Lay in the bottom of the tureen some slices of bread without the crust. Pour the soup upon it, and send it to table.
Light-coloured and dry cheese is necessary for this somewhat peculiar soup, but the best cheese of all is, undoubtedly, Gruyere. Grate half a pound of cheese and spread a layer of this at the bottom of the soup-tureen. Cover this layer of cheese with some very thin slices of stale crumb of bread. Then put another layer of cheese and another layer of bread till all the cheese is used up. Next take about two tablespoonfuls of brown roux, melt this in a small saucepan, and add two tablespoonfuls of chopped onion. Let the onion cook in the melted roux over the fire, and then add a quart of water, and stir it all up till it boils, adding pepper and salt and a few drops of Parisian essence (burnt sugar) to give it a dark brown colour. Now pour the boiling soup over the contents of the soup-tureen, and let it stand a few minutes so that the bread has time to soak, and serve.
Take a couple of young Capons, Trusse and set them and fill their bellies with Marrow, put them into a Pipkin with a knuckle of Veale, a Neck of Mutton, and a Marrow bone, and some sweet bread of Veale; season your Broth with Cloves, Mace, and a little Salt, set it to the fire, and let it boyle gently till your Capons be enough, but boyle them not too much; as your Capons boyle, make ready the bottomes and Tops of eight or ten new Rowles, and put them dryed into a faire Silver Dish wherein you serve the Capons; set it on the fire, and put to your bread, two Ladlefuls of Broth wherein your Capons are boyled and a Ladlefull of the Gravy of Mutton; so cover your Dish, and let it stand till you Dish up yovr Capons if need require, adde now and then a Ladlefull of Broth and Gravy, least the bread grow dry; when you are ready to serve it, first lay in the Marrow bone, then the Capons on each side, then fill up your Dish with the Gravy of Mutton, wherein you must wring the juyce of a Lemon or two, then with a spoon take off all the fat that swimmeth on the pottage, then garnish your Capon with the sweet Breads and some Lemons, and so serve it.
Begin by cleaning four potatoes, two leeks, a celery, four carrots, three pounds of big tomatoes; well wash all these vegetables and cut them in dice, the tomatoes a little larger. Cook them all gently for an hour in nearly two pints of gravy, to which you have already added two thick slices of bread and a pinch of salt. Take care that your vegetables do not stick to the bottom of the pan. When all is well cooked, pass it through a fine tammy. Add more gravy, or water and meat juice; make it of the consistency that you wish. Bring it to the boil again over the fire, adding pepper and salt, and just before serving a bit of fresh butter also. It is a great improvement to add at the last minute the yolk of an egg, mixed in a little cold water, quickly stirred in when the soup is off the fire. The three recipes for seven or eight persons. [G. Kerckaert.]
Beat the egg, yolk and white together; add salt and the cheese, grated, and the bread crumbs; mix well together and add to the boiling stock (strained). Stir well with a fork to prevent the egg from setting, and boil for four or five minutes.
Put a quart of red haricot beans into soak overnight, and put a little piece of soda in the water to soften it. The next morning put the beans on to boil in three quarts of water, with some carrot, celery and onion, or the beans can be boiled in some stock made from these vegetables. After the beans are tender, pound them in a mortar, and then rub the whole through a wire sieve, after first removing the carrot, celery and onion. Add a teaspoonful of pounded sugar and about two ounces of butter. Fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup. If the soup is liked thin, of course more water can be added.
