Cider soup.

Ingredients. One pint cider just beginning to work, 1 pint water, 1 cup milk (boiling), 1 tablespoon flour, a little cinnamon and sugar.

Let cider and water come to a boil, add the flour rubbed smooth, and cook a few minutes; and lastly add the milk. Serve with toast. An egg yolk may be added.

FRUIT SOUPS.

To be eaten Warm or Cold.

These are make of almost any well flavored fruit, cooked soft and mashed, sufficient water added, with a little thickening, sugar and spice. They are especially welcome in summer; may be eaten as a first course, or set aside to be used as a drink during the meal.

Apple soup,
No. 1.

Ingredients. Four cups peeled and quartered apples, cooked to a mush in a little water, 1 pints water, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, 3 teaspoons sugar, teaspoon cinnamon, a pinch of salt.

No. 2.

A soup plate full apples, 1 cup of rice. Cook soft and rub through a seive, adding a little sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and an egg yolk. Thin sufficiently with water.

No. 3.

Instead of rice, use in the above recipe bread with the addition of a few India currants.

No. 4.

Instead of rice, use oatmeal and cook till soft, or use

that already cooked.

Plum soup.

Cherry soup.

Make like apple soup, but if the plums are very sour add a little soda-1 teaspoon to a quart of soup. Made in the same manner.

These soups sour cherries.

Soups of pears,

may also be made of dried plums, prunes or dried Soak the fruit over night.

If soup is made of a milder fruit, as pears, which are at some seasons so cheap, add a few sour apples or more spice, to give flavor.

etc.

ADDITIONS TO SOUPS.

If your soup has not strength enough, milk and eggs may be added if no meat stock is at hand.

How to add eggs.

The egg should be beaten, mixed with a little of the soup, then added to the rest, but not boiled. The yolk

is better for this purpose than the white.

Meat extract.

Liebig's meat extract is very valuable for adding flavor to a soup but it is too expensive for general use. This may be boiled a few minutes with the soup after being mixed smooth in a little water, or better, cook it in a little butter or melted beef fat before adding to the soup.

1. Flour.

2. Bread

sponge.

On baking day, save a little of the bread sponge, make thin enough to pour, and if you wish, add a beaten egg. Set away half an hour to rise again, and when light pour into the soup.

3. Farina.

This preparation of wheat, now sold by the pound at a reasonable price, is most valuable as an addition to soup; it needs only to be sprinkled in and boiled for a few moments.

4. Potato.

5. Barley.

Mashed potato mixed smooth with a little milk or grated cold potato may be added to soup to give body. Add to the soup 1 hour before it is done pearl barley

that has been soaked over night.

6. Rice.

One-half hour before serving, add to soup 1 table

spoon of rice to a quart of soup.

7. Bread.

Bits of bread dried hard in the oven, may be added to the soup just before serving, or fry them in the spider in a little beef fat, or soak in milk and egg before frying. Or, toast bread and cut in squares.

Any small vegetables may be added, such as aspara8. Vegetables. gus tops, tiny onions that have been first boiled in another pot, cooked peas, beans, etc. A favorite Russian soup is beef soup, with the addition of beets, cabbage and carrots.

Most important of all additions to soup are those which need a little more time to prepare, but are worth the trouble if the soup is to be the principal part of the dinner. Such are the following:

DUMPLINGS FOR SOUPS AND STEWS.

This word has an unpleasant sound, too suggestive of the heavy and unwholesome balls often served under this name, but there seems to be no other name under which these different preparations can be classed. Their basis is bread and eggs, or flour and eggs. Bread mentioned here is hard dried bread; it must be softened by soaking in cold water (hot water makes it pasty), then press it dry in a cloth and crumble it

Meat balls.

Any cooked meat or several different kinds when ITS there is too little of each to be otherwise used, is chopped fine and mixed with as much bread, salted and peppered, a little chopped suet or butter, or better still, marrow, and a chopped onion and some herbs, and to each cup of this mixture allow an egg. Mix lightly, make out into little balls and cook in very gently boiling soup. Try one first to see if it holds together. If not, add a little flour.

Fish balls.

Marrow balls.

Bacon balls.

Substitute for the meat any cooked fish, chopped

fine.

Two eggs to 1 cup of bread and marrow size of an egg, chopped. Make as above.

Instead of marrow, add cubes of bacon fried brown. All these mixtures can also be fried in a pan as an omelette, or baked.

Flour and bread balls.

Three cups, half bread, half flour, 1 egg, butter size of an egg, 1 cup milk and water, salt. Soak the bread in the milk and water, and make out into little balls with the other ingredients. Cook, covered, 15 minutes (may also be boiled in salted water and eaten with fruit).

Egg sponge.

One egg, 1 teaspoon flour, a little salt. Beat white of egg to foam, mix lightly with the rest and pour on top of the soup. Turn over in a few minutes with a skimmer, and before putting into the turreen, cut it in pieces.

No. 2. One heaping tablespoon flour to 1 egg and the yolk of another, and 1 teaspoon butter. Beat hard and drop in with a teaspoon.

Schwaben Spetzel.

One egg, 3 tablespoons milk, nearly cup of flour, salt. Pour through a funnel into soup or into salted water, cook 5 minutes and use to garnish beef.

Biscuit dough

An excellent addition to a stew or soup is of biscuit balls. or rusk dough (see page 230) made into balls no larger than a chestnut, and cooked in the stew, or steamed in a cloth

above it.

Buttermilk

balls.

Also the following of buttermilk: 1 cup buttermilk, teaspoon soda, 1 egg, salt, and flour enough to allow

of the batter being dropped in spoonfuls.

Macaroni.

Cooked macaroni cut in pieces an inch long, is a pleasant addition to soup.

FLAVORS OR SEASONINGS.

Without doubt "hunger is the best sauce," but it is not true, as many think, that a craving for variety is the sign of a pampered and unnatural appetite; even animals, whom we cannot accuse of having "notions,” have been known to starve in the experimenter's hands rather than eat a perfectly nutritious food of whose flavor they had wearied, and prisoners become so tired of a too oft repeated dish that they vomit at the sight and smell of it.

What we call flavors may or may not be associated with a real food. Meats are rich in flavors and each fruit has its peculiar taste; then, there are the spices and aromatic herbs which are not parts of a real food, and it is most important that the cook should understand the art of adding these as seasonings to mild tasting foods, so as to make new dishes which shall be both nutritious and appetizing. The bulk of our nourishment must be made up of the flesh of a few animals, and a half-dozen grains and as many garden vegetables, but the skillful cook can make of them, with the help of other flavors, an endless variety of dishes.

An American traveling on the continent of Europe becomes acquainted with many new dishes and tastes, and although not all of them are to his liking, he must conclude that our cookery, compared for instance, with that of the French is very monotonous. To be sure, we have the advantage of the European in that our markets offer us a greater variety of natural foods, especially fruits, each having a flavor of its own, and this fact makes us somewhat more independent of the art of the cook; but still we have need

for every lesson of this sort, and especially is this the case with the poor, who must keep to the cheapest food materials, which are not in themselves rich in flavor.

Spices and other flavors, when not used to excess, stimulate our digestive organs to appropriate more easily the food to which they are added; their agreeable odor starts the digestive juices, both in the mouth and in the stomach, and their flavor acting on the palate has the same effect.

The more common spices and flavors, as the housewife uses these terms, are salt, pepper, mustard, cinnamon and mace, nutmegs, cloves, ginger, caraway and coriander seeds, vanilla, and many volatile oils, such as those contained in the rind of lemons and oranges; and to this list we must add certain vegetables, as the horseradish and various members of the onion family, the caper and nasturtium seeds, and the aromatic herbs.

All these have their use and their abuse. Salt is hardly thought of in this list, so necessary do we consider it, and its use is well enough governed by our palate, though no doubt we over, rather than under salt our foods. Pepper is also in nearly every household used to excess, being added to too many dishes. The pungent mustard should be still more carefully used; but a little of it adds relish to a salad or a meat sauce, and goes especially well with certain vegetables, as beans. Cinnamon, mace and nutmeg, we use principally with sweet dishes, but nutmeg makes a nice variety in cer- . tain meat stews and in croquettes, foreign cooks use it far too much to suit our taste. Almost our only use of the caraway and coriander seeds is in cookies; try the former in a potato soup for variety. Ginger seems to go well with Indian meal in a pudding or porridge, and with molasses, wherever used.

To give the uses for onions and for the aromatic herbs would be too long a task. The latter can all be bought in a dried state very cheaply, and they retain their flavor well; one of the most useful, however, parsley, is much better fresh; by all means keep a little box of it growing in a window. Perhaps, after onion, celery is most useful as a flavor for soups and stews, root, stem, leaves and seeds being all valuable.

In the flavoring of soups and stews, it is well to use a number of flavors, letting no one of them be prominent above the others; on the other hand, it is well to have certain favorite dishes seasoned always in the same way; as fresh pork with sage; summer savory in a bread dressing, etc.