IN making any kind of soups, particularly vermicelli, portable, brown gravy soup, or any other in which herbs are used, remember to lay the meat in the bottom of your pan, with a large lump of butter. Having cut the roots and herbs small, stew them over the meat, and set the pan on a very slow fire. This will draw all the virtue out of the different ingredients, will produce a good gravy, and a very different effect, in point of flavour, than if at first you had put in water. Fill your pan with water as soon as the gravy is almost dried up. Take off the fat as soon as it begins to boil, and then follow the directions for making the sort of soup you wish to have. Green peas, intended for soup, require hard water; but soft water is preferable for old pea soup. In making white soup, let it be taken off the fire before you put in the cream. As soups are soon cold, always dish them up the last thing. Take care all the greens and herbs you use in soups are Well washed and clean picked, and that no one thing has a predominant taste over another, but that it has a fine agreeable relish, and that all the tastes he united.

Soup A La Reine

Cut a few slices of lean ham, and cover the bottom of a stewpan, that will hold four quarts; cut up two fowls, and put them in the stewpan, with a few slices of veal, some parsley, six onions, a few blades of mace, and about half a pint of water; put it on a slow stove for an hour, to draw down; (take care that it does not catch at the bottom :) when drawn down, fill up the stewpan with some of your best stock, and let it boil gently for one hour; take out the fowls, and pull the meat from the bones ; put it into a mortar, with two ounces of sweet almonds; let it be pounded very fine, so that it will go through a tammy : when beat enough, put it into a small soup-pot that will hold about three quarts; put nearly two quarts of the stock which the fowls were boiled in, with the crumb of three French rolls; let it boil for one hour, then rub it through a tammy, and add about a pint of good cream that has been boiled ; put it in the soup-pot, and put the pot into a stewpan of hot water, and set it by the side of a stove to boil. Before you put it into the tureen, taste it, as perhaps it may want a little salt, or a small bit of sugar: cut the crust of the rolls, which you took the crumb from, into round pieces, about the size of a shilling, and put them into the tureen before the soup is put in.

N. B. All white soups should be warmed by putting the soup-pot into hot water.

Vermicelli Soup, White Or Brown

Blanch as much vermicelli as is wanted, by putting it on the fire in cold water; let it boil up, then strain it off, and put it into cold water; let the vermicelli stay in the water until it is cold, (if it is left on a sieve to drain while hot, it becomes lumpy, and will not dissolve again,) strain it quite dry from the cold water, put as much best stock as you want soup. If it is for white, make a liaison of six eggs.