THICK SOUPS AND PUREES.
Whether you add eggs, cream, butter, or milk to soup, it is a sine quâ non that the process be carried out off the fire, i.e., the vessel containing the soup must be lifted from the fire and cooled a little before you go to work. It is also a rule that these additions must be deferred till the last moment before serving.
I shall give several recipes for standard thick soups such as mock-turtle, ox-tail, giblet, &c., in my menus, and if the few general rules I have laid down be carefully noted, I think that my readers will experience very little difficulty in carrying them out satisfactorily.
PURÉES.
And now we come to the purée which, to my mind, is perhaps one of the most important features of the whole study of cookery.
This form of preparing our meat and vegetables ought to be much more generally understood and practised than it is. In a purée we can work into a palatable and wholesome condition meat that from its poverty or toughness would be sorry fare indeed if boiled or roasted. An ordinary little dish of neatly trimmed mutton-chops (nicely grilled over a clear fire) becomes an artistic entrée if served round a nest of mashed potato, con-taining a delicate purée of vegetable, such as celery, peas, asparagus, tomato, spinach, &c., whilst common onion sauce, thus treated, is promoted to the dignity of sauce soubise.
The flesh of old partridges, grouse, and pheasants, the remains of cold poultry, and of all game, can be turned to capital account in a purée. Even tough fowls may be thus rendered fit to eat. For the sick, and for those suffering from toothache, food cooked in this manner is invaluable, whilst there can be no doubt that it must be good for children.
In order to be able to accomplish the making of purées satisfactorily you must possess a strong pestle and mortar, a large hair sieve, a wire sieve, and a mincing machine. If you desire to make a purée of meat of any kind, an immense amount of labour is saved by first using the mincer, the work