Method.—Prepare the vegetables and cut them into very small dice or cubes. Fry lightly in the butter, add a good pinch of castor sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Moisten with some of the consommé. Cook gently for about ½ an hour, skim, add the remainder of the consommé, and boil gently until the vegetables are tender. Soak the tapioca in tepid water, strain and put it in a stewpan with a little consommé, cook till tender, and mix it with the remainder of the soup a few minutes before sending to table, when a few drops of lemon juice should be added.
Time.—1½ hours. Average Cost, 2s. 6d. per quart. Sufficient for 6 persons.
Tapioca (Fr. tapioca) is a preparation of cassava meal, made from a South American shrub of some 8 feet in height, with broad, shining leaves, and handsome white and rose-coloured flowers. The nutritious starch is obtained from the thick, fleshy, parsnip-like roots by the process of washing, maceration and pressure to express the juice, which, in its natural state, is poisonous. The cassava meal, while in the moist state, is made into flat cakes and heated and dried on hot plates.
30.—CLEAR BRUNOISE SOUP. (Fr.—Consommé Brunoise.)
Ingredients.—3 pints of clear soup (see Recipe 42 page 156), 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 turnip, ½ an oz. of butter, pepper and salt.
Method.—Prepare the vegetables and cut them into very small dice or cubes, melt the butter in a stewpan, put in the dice of vegetables with a little salt and pepper, and fry very gently for a few minutes, shaking and tossing them frequently to prevent them taking colour. Drain well to free them from butter, add them to the hot soup and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Skim well.
Time.—To prepare and cook the vegetables, ½ an hour. Average Cost, 3s. 6d. Seasonable at any time. Sufficient for 6 persons.
31.—CLEAR COLD CHICKEN SOUP. (Fr.—Consommé de Volaille Frappé.)
Ingredients.—1 old hen, 1½ lb. of knuckle of veal, 1½ lb. of shin of beef, salt, soup vegetables, 2 cloves, a few peppercorns, 1 oz. of butter, 1 glass of sherry.
Method.—Pluck and truss the fowl as for boiling, put the butter in a stewpan, and add the fowl whole as soon as the butter is hot; let it get a nice brown, then add the meat. Pour on about a gallon of water and set it to boil—it must come slowly to the boil, and remove the scum. Have the vegetables ready and well washed (they should include 1 onion stuck with 2 cloves, ½ a head of celery, 2 carrots, 1 leek, 2 small turnips, 1 bay-leaf, and a parsley root, and put them in the stock. Add a little salt and the peppercorns, simmer gently for about 4 hours, or longer; skim occasionally. The fowl may be taken
