Page:The White House Cook Book.djvu/39

 SOUPS. 29

Mock turtle, and sometimes veal and lamb soups, should be this color.

Okras gives a green color to soup.

To color soup red, skin six red tomatoes, squeeze out the seeds, and put them into the soup with the other vegetables or take the juice only, as directed for spinach.

For white soups, which are of veal, lamb or chicken, none but white vegetables are used ; rice, pearl barley, vermicelli, or macaroni, for thickening.

Grated carrot gives a fine amber color to soup ; it must be put in as soon as the soup is free from scum.

Hotel and private-house stock is quite different.

Hotels use meat in such large quanities that there is always more or less trimmings and bones of meat to add to fresh meats ; that makes very strong stock, which they use in most all soups and gravies and other made dishes.

The meat from which soup has been made is. good to serve cold thus : Take out all the bones, season with pepper and salt, and cat- sup, if liked, then chop it small, tie it in a cloth, and lay it between two plates, with a weight on the upper one; slice it thin for luncheon or supper ; or make sandwiches of it ; or make a hash for breakfast ; or make it into balls, with the addition of a little wheat flour and an egg, and serve them fried in fat, or boil in the soup.

An agreeable flavor is sometimes imparted to soup by sticking some cloves into the meat used for making stock; a few slices of onions fried very brown in butter are nice; also flour browned by simply putting it into a saucepan over the fire and stirring it con- stantly until it is a dark brown.

Clear soups must be perfectly transparent, and thickened soups about the consistency of cream. When soups and gravies are kept from day to day in hot weather, they should be warmed up every day, and put into fresh-scalded pans or tureens, and placed in a cool cellar. In temperate weather, every other day may be sufficient.

HERBS AND VEGETABLES USED IN SOUPS.

OF vegetables the principal ones are carrots, tomatoes, asparagus, green peas, okra, macaroni, green corn, beans, rice, vermicelli, Scotch barley, pearl barley, wheat flour, mushroom, or mushroom catsup,

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