Cut off the shoulder part of a fore quarter of mutton, and having cut
all the meat from the bone, put it into a soup pot with two quarts of
water. As soon as it boils, skim it well, and then slacken the fire
and simmer the meat for an hour and a half. Then take the remainder of
the mutton, and put it whole into the soup-pot with sufficient boiling
water to cover it well, and salt it to your taste. Skim it the moment
the fresh piece of meat begins to boil, and about every quarter of an
hour afterwards. It should boil slowly five hours. Prepare half a
dozen turnips, four carrots,[B] and three onions, (all cut up, but not
small,) and put them in about an hour and a half before dinner. You may
also put in some small dumplings. Add some chopped parsley.
Cut the meat off the scrag into small pieces, and send it to table in
the tureen with the soup. The other half of the mutton should be served
on a separate dish, with whole turnips boiled and laid round it. Many
persons are fond of mutton that has been boiled in soup.
You may thicken this soup with rice or barley that has first been
soaked in cold water; or with green peas; or with young corn, cut down
from the cob; or with tomatas scalded, peeled, and cut into pieces.
_Cabbage Soup_ may be made in the same manner, of neck of mutton. Omit
all the other vegetables, and put in a large head of white cabbage,
stripped of the outside leaves, and cut small.
_Noodle Soup_ can be made in this manner also. Noodles are a mixture of
flour and beaten egg, made into a stiff paste, kneaded, rolled out very
thin, and cut into long narrow slips, not thicker than straws, and then
dried three or four hours in the sun, on tin or pewter plates. They
must be put in the soup shortly before dinner, as, if boiled too long
they will go to pieces.
With the mutton that is taken from the soup you may send to table some
suet dumplings, boiled in another pot, and served on a separate dish.
Make them in the proportion of half a pound of beef suet to a pound
and a quarter of flour. Chop the suet as fine as possible, rub it into
the flour, and mix it into a dough with a little cold water. Roll it
out thick, and cut it into dumplings about as large as the top of a
tumbler, and boil them an hour.