309. Crecy Soup With Whole Rice

Wash, blanch, and boil in consomme, half a pound of Carolina rice; add this to a sufficient quantity of Crecy or carrot soup, either prepared for the occasion, or reserved from the previous day's dinner. Mix these together gently, and take care not to break the grains of rice, nor to serve it too thick.

Note. - This may be varied by substituting macaroni, vermicelli, or any other kind of Italian paste for the rice. This rule is applicable to purees of vegetables in general.

310. Potato Soup A La Creme

Cleanse, peel, wash, and slice up about twenty large-sized, good potatoes. Put them into a stewpan with one large onion, and one head of celery - also sliced up; add four ounces of fresh butter, a little pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg; set them to simmer on a slow fire, stirring them occasionally, until they are nearly dissolved into a kind of puree. Then add to them three pints of good white consomme, and after having allowed the potatoes to boil gently by the side of a moderate fire for half an hour, pass them through the tammy, and having removed the puree into a soup-pot, add, if requisite, a little more consomme, and set the puree on the fire to boil gently by the side of the stove, in order to clarify it in the usual manner required for other purees of vegetables. Just before sending to table, add a pint of boiling cream, a pat of fresh butter, and a little pounded sugar.

Serve the fried crusts with this soup.

311. Potato Soup A La Victoria

Prepare a puree of potatoes as directed above, and finish it in the same manner. When about to send to table, place three dozen of small quenelles of potatoes (No. 312) in the soup-tureen, with half a pint of large heads of asparagus boiled green, and the same proportion of French beans cut into diamond shapes and boiled, and then pour the boiling puree thereon, and serve.

312. Quenelles For Potatoes

Bake six large potatoes, cut them into halves, scoop them out on to a wire sieve, and rub them through it, on to a dish, with a wooden spoon; then put the potato thus obtained into a stewpan, with font-ounces of fresh butter, half a pint of double-cream, a little grated nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Stir this on a rather brisk fire until the paste ceases to adhere to the spoon; then remove the potatoes from off the fire, and mix in with them the yelks of three eggs and also two whites of egg which have been whipped to a froth observing that this preparation must be kept of the same consis. tency as any other quenelles. Then mould the quenelles according to the size and shape required, and poach them in boiling water with a little salt in it.

313. Puree Of Asparagus A La Conde

Order two quarts of very young and green asparagus peas, or two large bundles of good sprue asparagus; break off the heads so far down to the foot of the stalks that they will readily snap off without resistance, which will prove them to be young and tender; throw these into a large pan of cold water, together with a handful of spinach, the same quantity of parsley and of green onions. Having got these ready, set a large stewpan on the fire half filled with boiling water, with a handful of salt in it. First drain the asparagus, etc, into a colander, and then put the whole into the stewpan on the fire to boil fast ; when they are done, drain them again in a colander, let some cold water run over them for the purpose of retaining their greenness; and being well drained of the water, put them into a middle-sized stewpan, with a quart of good Veloute sauce (No. 4), a tablespoonful of pounded sugar, and a little grated nutmeg and salt. Stir the whole on a brisk fire until it has boiled about three minutes, when it must be passed through a tammy-cloth or sieve on to a large dish, and after being removed into a soup-pot, should be placed on the ice in the larder to keep cool, in order that it may the better retain its green color and delicate flavor. Ten minutes before serving up the soup to table, stir it on a brisk fire until it is nearly boiling, remove it from the stove, and, having mixed in with it a pat of butter and a small piece of light-colored glaze, send to table with a plate of croutons.