A pint of canned tomatoes, boiled, and passed through the sieve, with a
quart of bean soup, makes a very pleasant change.
ONION SOUP (_Soupe à l’Ognon_).
A soup without meat, and delicious.
I was taught how to make this soup by a Frenchwoman; and it will be
found a valuable addition to one’s culinary knowledge. It is a good
Friday soup.
Put into a saucepan butter size of a pigeon’s egg. Clarified grease, or
the cakes of fat saved from the top of stock, or soup (I always use the
latter), answer about as well. When very hot, add two or three large
onions, sliced thin; stir, and cook them well until they are red; then
add a full half-tea-cupful of flour. Stir this also until it is red,
watching it constantly, that it does not burn. Now pour in about a pint
of boiling water, and add pepper and salt. Mix it well, and let it boil
a minute; then pour it into the soup-kettle, and place it at the back of
the range until almost ready to serve. Add then one and a half pints or
a quart of boiling milk, and two or three well-mashed boiled potatoes.
Add to the potatoes a little of the soup at first, then more, until they
are smooth, and thin enough to put into the soup-kettle. Stir all well
and smoothly together; taste, to see if the soup is properly seasoned
with pepper and salt, as it requires plenty, especially of the latter.
Let it simmer a few moments. Put pieces of toasted bread (a good way of
using dry bread), cut in diamond shape, in the bottom of the tureen.
Pour over the soup, and serve very hot. Or,
This soup might be made without potatoes, if more convenient, using more
flour, and all milk instead of a little water. However, it is better
with the potato addition; or it is much improved by adding stock instead
of water; or, if one should chance to have a boiled chicken, the water
in which it was boiled might be saved to make this soup.
VEGETABLE SOUP WITHOUT MEAT (_Purée aux Légumes_).
Cut up a large plateful of any and all kinds of vegetables one happens
to have; for example, onions, carrots, potatoes (boiled in other water),
beans (of any kind), parsnips, celery, pease, parsley, leeks, turnips,
cauliflower, spinach, cabbage, etc., always having either potatoes or
beans for a thickening. First put into a saucepan half a tea-cupful of
butter (clarified suet or stock-pot fat is just as good). When it is
very hot, put in first the cut-up onions. Stir them well, to prevent
from burning. When they assume a fine red color, stir in a large
table-spoonful of flour until it has the same color. Now stir in a pint
of hot water, and some pepper and salt. Mind not to add pepper and salt
at first, as the onions and flour would then more readily burn. Add,
also, all the other vegetables. Let them simmer (adding more hot water
when necessary) for two hours; then press them through a colander.
Return them to the range in a soup-kettle, and let them simmer until
the moment of serving.