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Some Easy Soups

Every little cook should early be taught how to make a variety of soups, as many small quantities of food can be utilized in this way that otherwise might be wasted.

STOCK

Take, for instance, the bones and small trimmings from steaks, chops or a roast, and the remnant of a chicken. These, with a five-cent soup bone, will make the stock, which is the foundation for a great many kinds of soup. If part of the scraps have been fried or roasted, so much the better, as then the stock will be a delicate brown and have even a richer taste. The meat, cut in small cubes, with the bones well cracked, should be covered with twice the quantity of cold water and allowed to stand for several hours.

CLEAR VEGETABLE SOUP

Any kind of vegetables on hand can be put in at the same time, a small onion cut in slices, a little chopped carrot, turnip, a few string beans cut in inch lengths, half a cupful of peas, a couple of stalks of celery, a few sprigs of parsley, together with three or four cloves and salt and pepper to taste. If these vegetables with the meat fill the kettle one-third full, then it can be filled to the top with cold water. After standing several hours it should be placed where it will heat slowly and allowed to simmer for two hours, then strained and set aside to cool and let the grease come to the top. When it is cold the cake of fat can easily be lifted off.

Green-Pepper Salad

CONSOMMÉ AND BOUILLON

Then to make the finest kind of perfectly clear soup, stir into each two quarts of cold stock the beaten white and crushed shell of one egg, place on the fire and keep stirring until it boils. Allow to cook without stirring for twenty minutes, after which set aside for ten minutes; skim and strain through a cheese-cloth bag. This may seem like a good deal of work, but if the soup is first boiled in the morning while cleaning up the kitchen and then clarified while getting dinner, it will not require much time nor trouble, and the result will be a delicious consommé or bouillon. It is called bouillon if made principally of beef with vegetables, and brown in color; it is consommé if made of uncooked meat and bones, including veal and chicken, and consequently light in color.

PLEASING VARIATIONS

Stock made thus can be simply reheated or changed to any desired kind of soup by the addition of a particular garnishing. For rice soup, either a few teaspoonfuls of uncooked rice or half a teacupful of cold boiled rice can be added; for vegetable soup a cupful of mixed vegetables cut in small pieces can be put in and boiled until tender. Macaroni, broken in inch lengths, washed and then cooked in the stock until it is done makes a nice change, called Italian consommé, while a cupful of tomatoes will convert it into a tomato soup. If the additions suggested are to be made, however, it is not necessary to clarify the stock. It takes common sense to make good soup, as well as time and patience, and one must learn to be guided by the taste if trying to use up left-overs instead of following a regular recipe.

Cream soups, however, do not require any stock, and so are easily and quickly made. They are delicious, too, and something any bright girl could make while her mother got up the rest of the dinner. They take the name of the kind of vegetable used, but all are put together in about the same way.