Lean, juicy beef, mutton, and veal, form the basis of all good soups, so it is advisable to buy such parts that offer the richest succulence, and how fresh water is dead. Stale meat makes it bad, and fat is not so well adapted to make them. The art director of composing good rich soup, the proportion is so the various ingredients that the flavor of one should not take priority over another and that all items within it, should form a nice set. To accomplish this, care must be taken in the roots and herbs that are perfectly clean and the water is proportional to the amount of meat and other ingredients. Generally a quart of water may be admitted to a kilo of meat for soups, and half the quantity for gravies. When making soups or gravies, gentle stewing or simmering is incomparably the best. It may be noted, however, that a really good soup, but can never be done in a well-closed container, though, perhaps, a better health is achieved by any exposure to air. Soups will, in general, takes three to six hours to make, and are much better prepared the day before being found. When the soup is cold, the fat can be much more readily and completely removed, and when it is poured off, care must be taken not to disturb the settlings the bottom of the vessel, which are so thin that they will escape through a sieve. A Tamil is the best passer, and if the soup is strained while it is hot, let the Tamil or cloth be previously soaked in cold water. Clear soups must be perfectly transparent and thickened soups about the consistency of cream. To thicken and give body to soups and gravies, potato-mucilage, arrow-root, bread-rasping, isinglass, flour and butter, barley, rice, oatmeal, or in a well-rubbed little water, are used. A piece of boiled beef pounded to a pulp with a little butter and flour, and rubbed through a sieve, and gradually incorporated with the soup, will be found an excellent addition. When the soup seems too thin or too weak, the lid of the boiler must be removed and the contents allowed to boil up some of the shares has evaporated watery, or some of the thickening materials, above, should be added. When soups and gravies are kept from day to day in hot weather, they must be warmed up each day and placed in pans or tureens fresh blanched, and placed in a cool cellar. In temperate weather, every other day may not be enough.
Various herbs and vegetables are needed for the purpose of making soups and gravies. Of these the principal are, Scotch barley, pearl barley, wheat flour, oatmeal, bread-rasping, peas, beans, rice, noodles, macaroni, isinglass, potato-mucilage, mushroom or mushroom ketchup, champignons, parsnips, carrots, beets, turnips, garlic, onion and shallots. Sliced onions, fried with butter and flour until they are browned and then rubbed through a sieve, are excellent to heighten the brown color and flavor soups and sauces, and form the basis for many of the fine relishes furnished by the cook.
The older and drier the onion, the stronger the flavor. Leeks, cucumber, Burnet or vinegar, celery or celery-seed pounded. The latter, though equally strong, if they could not the delicate flavor of fresh vegetables, and when used as a substitute, the taste should be corrected by adding a little sugar. Cress-seed, parsley, common thyme, lemon thyme, orange thyme, knotted marjoram, sage, mint, winter savory, and basil. How fresh green basil is seldom to be procured, and soon its fine flavor is lost, the best way of preserving the extract is by pouring wine on the fresh leaves.
For the seasoning of soups, bay leaf, tomato, tarragon, chervil, Burnet, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, flower of nutmeg, black pepper and white, essence of anchovy, lemon-peel, and juice, and Seville orange juice, are all taken. The latter conveys a fine aroma of the lemon, and the acid is much milder. These materials, with wine, mushroom ketchup, Harvey's sauce, tomato sauce, combined in different proportions, are, with other ingredients, manipulated into an almost infinite variety of excellent soups and gravies. Soups, which is intended to constitute the main part of a meal, certainly not to be flavored sauces, which are only designed to give a special flavor to any dish.
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