Observe that you add the soup to the roux, not the roux to the soup. The adding should be done by degrees, if you want the soup to be smooth and creamy.

If after coming to the boil, you find the soup too thin, you must proceed as follows:- a little more roux very carefully in a small sauce-pan, add a cupful of the soup to it, and when quite smooth, and free from lumps, pour it by degrees into the soup, off the fire, through a pointed gravy strainer, stirring vigorously as you do so. When quite mixed, replace the vessel on the fire, and let it boil up.

I have given several recipes for thick soups such as mock-turtle, ox-tail, giblet, etc. in my menus, and if the few general rules I have laid down be carefully noted, I think that my readers will experience very little difficulty in carrying them out satisfactorily.

And now, we come to the puree which, to my mind, is perhaps one of the most important features of the whole study of cookery.

In India this form of preparing our meat and vegetables ought to be much more generally understood and practised than it is. In a puree we can work into a palatable and wholesome condition, meat that from its poverty or toughness, would be sorryfare indeed if boiled, or roasted. An ordinary little dish of neatly trimmed mutton-chops (nicely grilled over a clear fire) becomes an artistic entree if served round a nest of mashed potato, containing a delicate puree of vegetable, such as celery, peas, asparagus, tomato, spinach, etc. whilst common onion sauce, thus treated, is promoted to the dignity of sauce soubise.

Old partridges and jungle fowl, the remains of cold poultry, and of all game, can be turned to capital account in a puree. Even an ancient, and extraordinarily tough "moorghee" may be thus rendered fit to eat. For the sick, and for those suffering from tooth-ache, food cooked in this manner is invaluable, whilst there can be no doubt that it must be good for children.

In order to be able to accomplish the making of purees satisfactorily you must possess a strong pestle and mortar, a large hair sieve, a wire sieve, and a mincing machine. If you desire to make a puree of meat of any kind, an immense amount of labour is saved by first using the mincer, the work in the mortar is then reduced to a minimum, and the pounded meat will soon be ready to pass through the sieve.

In using the sieve, by the way, caution your cook that he must always put whatever he wishes to pass through it, at the shallow end, placing the sieve over a large bowl. or dish, big enough to receive it, and rubbing the puree through it with a large wooden spoon. From time to time he must invert the sieve, and scrape off the portion of the puree which always adheres to the reverse side of the hair, or wire. A cook must be patient in the use of this utensil, and achieve his object by perseverance, rather than by boisterous work. If you bear too heavily on the hair, your sieve will soon bulge, and ere long the hair will part company from the wooden cylinder to which it is attached.

Purees, as soups, are prepared in this way :- You first must make as good a bowl of stock as you can from bones, meat, scraps, (bones of ham and bacon especially valuable) sufficient for the number of people you have to cater for. Let it get cool and remove the Eat that rises to its surface. You should flavour your stock to the best of your capabilities with dried sweet herbs, onion, parsley, a carrot or two, celery, etc., or such vegetables as may be available, with salt and pepper to taste. The better your stock, or foundation, the better your puree.

Suppose, now, that you want to make potage a la Crecy, which in plain terms is carrot puree:- boil as many carrots as you think will suffice for the quantity of soup you have to make in the stock made as aforesaid: when thoroughly done, drain them, and pass them through the sieve. Now, mix the pulp so obtained with sufficient of the stock to make a puree a little thinner than you wish your soup eventually to be. Melt a piece of butter at the bottom of a sauce-pan, and work a little flour into it, gradually adding the puree, and stirring without ceasing till the soup comes to the boil, when it will be found of the proper consistency. Skim, if necessary, and serve.

The pith of this recipe, and of all receipts for purees, lies In the liaison of melted butter and flour which must be worked into the soup as described, and at the period indicated. Why? - well, have you ever noticed carrot, or pea-soup, which, when sent to table, instead of looking the creamy red, or green puree that you desired, presented the appearance of a thin gravy soup, with a quantity of the vegetable pulp at the bottom of each basin - the stock and the pulp not having amalgamated? This result was caused by the omission of the process I have described which is necessary to blend the two together.

Grecy soup should be served with bread cut into dice and fried in butter; or crisped on a buttered tin in the oven after having been soaked in a little of the stock. Croutons, treated in this way, should accompany all vegetable purees.

Purees of celery, Jerusalem artichokes, (Palestine soup,) onion, and turnips, if the stock be kept free from colour, can be served as white soups, and cream, or the substitute already described, will be found an improvement to all of them.

"Potage a la reine," a very old white soup, is really a puree of fowl or turkey, and an excellent white potage, very like it, can be produced from a rabbit. Those artistic entrees "creme de homard," "creme de volaille" "crime d'artichauts," etc., are merely consolidated purees. The quenelle again, is only meat worked to that condition, and bound with bread-crumb, or paste, and eggs,

The puree of chestnuts is a well-known delicacy at elaborate banquets at home and abroad, whether in the form of soup, or as a sauce to accompany white entrees, and especially the turkey. The Indian nut commonly known as the "promotion nut," and fresh almonds, make capital purees if carefully treated, and I daresay that there are other nuts to be got in India that would well repay the trouble of a trial, in the same way.

All green vegetable purees derive enrichment in appearance by the judicious addition of "spinach-greening" which is, in itself, the liquor obtained from spinach boiled, drained, worked through the sieve, and then squeezed through a piece of muslin. I have seen people quite deceived with a soup made with dried peas and coloured with "spinach-greening" in imitation of puree de pois verts. A pinch of sugar ought not to be forgotten in making these soups.

The enterprising cultivators of asparagus at Madras ought now and then to indulge their guests with that excellent soup "puree d'asperges" which however ranks next, I take it, to the still more artistic "consomme aux points d'asperges."

You can make a capital green puree any day at Madras with French beans; and with one tin of petits pois (thought-fully assisted with spinach-greening if the peas have lost colour) you can produce a very perfect puree of green peas for about eight people. A very inviting-looking soup of bright colour can be made from tomatoes, following exactly the receipt for "Crecy" and substituting tomatoes for carrots.

Brown purees are, of course, those made of game such as hares, partridges, snipe, wild duck, teal, etc. In this way you can always advantageously dispose of tough old birds. A good puree de gibier, of hare, or of any game-bird, is, without doubt, soup which is with justice widely popular. It is essentially the soup of the hungry man. A basin of it, to use a homely phrase, "goes a long way." It carries your thoughts back to winter fires, to old-fashioned, yet generous fare, and to the glorious appetite with which you spread your napkin before you after a day with the hounds, a trudge after wild partridges, or a long drive through the keen frosty air of some by-gone Christmastide!

These soups are what house-keepers call "rich," for in their composition you must employ port, or Madeira, red currant jelly, butter, cream, yolks of eggs, etc. One of the greatest cooks of the age propounds half a bottle of old port for his hare soup ! and all game soups take a goodly share of wine.

The points to observe in the making of these purees are, first, to get every atom of flavour you can out of the bones, scraps, and giblets, which is done by simmering them watchfully in stock. Then to work all the meat you can pick from the birds to a stiff paste in a mortar (having first minced it in the machine) passing it through the sieve to get rid of fibre, gristle, and so forth. Next to blend the pulp of the game with the stock in the way I have previously described. And lastly, to follow with accuracy whatever recipe you have taken as regards the flavouring elements. Do not leave out anything if you can possibly manage it. Dried sweet herbs, (thyme and marjoram,) are as necessary in game soups, as is basil in turtle; and red currant jelly is indispensable. Spice is often mentioned in recipes for these soups. I do not recommend it. In fact, beyond the two cloves inserted in the onion used for the stock, I would carefully omit it.

As I intend to give detailed instructions for game purees in their turn in my menus, I will not pursue the subject any further in this chapter. Neither will I discuss the treatment of tinned soups just yet, for I shall reserve that branch of Indian soup-making for consideration hereafter in a chapter devoted to "Camp cookery."

N.B. - Caution your butler to be careful to help the soup at a dinner party with judgment. One ladleful in each basin is ample.