a considerable improvement to the
taste of veal, whether roasted or boiled; and it is the same in soup.
When therefore veal broth is made for family use, two ounces of fat
bacon should be added to every gallon, melted before the fire or in a
fryingpan. The soup should then be thickened with flour, potatoe starch,
and barley. The last article should seldom be omitted in any soup, it
being so very cheap and pleasant, as well as wholesome and nutritious.
Soup made of tripe is another cheap article. Boil a pound of well
cleaned tripe in a gallon of barley broth, with onions and parsley,
adding two ounces of bacon fat, with salt and pepper. This produces an
extremely nutritious soup, from the gelatinous principle with which the
tripe abounds. Cow heels, calves and sheep's feet, are also well adapted
to the purpose. Excellent soups may be made from fried meat, where the
fat and gravy are added to the boiled barley; and for that purpose, fat
beef steaks, pork and mutton chops, should be preferred, as containing
more of the nutritious principle. Towards the latter end of frying the
steaks, add a little water to produce a gravy, which is to be put to the
barley broth. A little flour should also be dredged in, which will take
up all the fat left in the fryingpan. A quantity of onions should
previously be shred, and fried with the fat, which gives the soup a fine
flavour, with the addition of pepper, salt, and other seasoning. There
would be no end to the variety of soups that might be made from a number
of cheap articles differently combined; but perhaps the distribution of
soup gratis does not answer so well as teaching people how to make it,
and to improve their comforts at home. The time lost in waiting for the
boon, and fetching it home, might by an industrious occupation, however
poorly paid for labour, be turned to a better account than the mere
obtaining of a quart of soup. But it unfortunately happens, that the
best and cheapest method of making a nourishing soup, is least known to
those who have most need of it. The labouring classes seldom purchase
what are called the coarser pieces of meat, because they do not know how
to dress them, but lay out their money in pieces for roasting, which
are far less profitable, and more expensive in the purchase. To save
time, trouble, and firing, these are generally sent to the oven to be
baked, the nourishing parts are evaporated and dried up, the weight is
diminished nearly one third