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Recipes: Clear

SOUPS No. 19. Clear Soup Ingredients: Stock meat, water, a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley, chervil, bay leaf, basil, marjoram), three carrots, three turnips, three onions, three cloves stuck in the onions, one blade of mace.

Cut up three pounds of stock meat small and put it in a stock pot with two quarts of cold water, three carrots, and three turnips cut up, three onions with a clove stuck in each one, a bunch of herbs and a blade of mace. Let it come to the boil and then draw it off, at once skim off all the scum, and keep it gently simmering, and occasionally add two or three tablespoonsful of cold water. Let it simmer all day, and then strain it through a fine cloth.

Some of the liquor in which a calf's head has been cooked, or even a calf's foot, will greatly improve a clear soup.

The stock should never be allowed to boil as long as the meat and vegetables are in the stock pot.

No. 20. Zuppa Primaverile (Spring Soup) Ingredients: Clear soup, vegetables.

Any fresh spring vegetables will do for this soup, but they must all be cooked separately and put into the soup at the last minute. It is best made with fresh peas, asparagus tips, and a few strips of tarragon.

No. 21. Soup alla Lombarda Ingredients: Clear soup, fowl forcemeat, Béchamel (No. 3), peas, lobster butter, eggs, asparagus.

Make a firm forcemeat of fowl and divide it into three parts, to the first add two spoonsful of cream Béchamel, to the second four spoonsful of purée of green peas, to the third two spoonsful of lobster butter and the yolk of an egg; thus you will have the Italian colours-red, white, and green.

Butter a pie dish and make little quenelles of the forcemeat. Just before serving boil them for four minutes in boiling stock, take them out carefully and put them in a warm soup tureen with two spoonsful of cooked green peas and pour a very fresh clear soup over them. Hand little croûtons fried in lobster butter separately.

No. 22. Tuscan Soup Ingredients: Stock, eggs.

Whip up three or four eggs, gradually add good stock to them, and keep on whisking them up until they begin to curdle. Keep the soup hot in a bain-marie.