Under this head may be gathered such a noble army of toothsome and economical soups, purees, and potages as would fill half this book were the attempt made to register and give recipes for all of them. They are especial favorites of the thrifty house-mother who would look well after ways and means, yet feed wisely and agreeably her growing family. It cannot be denied that, while clear soups are, as been said already, elegant and conventional, the best of them are deficient in such nourishment as is to be found in what the French call the pot-au-fcu, and what we know as "a good, substantial broth."

In a well-managed household the family stock-pot need never be emptied except to be washed and re-filled. It is humiliating and depressing to an intelligent caterer to reflect how much that is palatable and nourishing goes into that one of our national institutions familiarly defined as "a swill-pail." This much-perverted receptacle should receive nothing that can be converted into aliment for human creatures. Excepting always the scrapings of the plates used at table and such bones and bits as are found upon them, all "left-overs" should be inspected by the mistress of a house before they are condemned as "no good."

Bones, meat-rinds, the heels and crusts of loaves, stale biscuits and hard chunks of cheese, cold vegetables of all sorts, the fat of all kinds of meat - in a word, odds and ends of every description - have capabilities in the eye of the accomplished cook whose own the kitchen is, and to whose interest it is to get the full worth of a hundred and one cents out of every dollar.

To cite one item of unconsidered waste, apropos to our family stock-pot: Who, among even notable housekeepers, insists that the water in which rice or macaroni is boiled be set aside in a cool place to make thicker and better to-morrow's broth ? Look next morning at the rice-water Bridget would have thrown into the sink, and you find a tolerably firm jelly, more nutritious than the cereal which was strained out of it. It works well into any kind of white soup, and, joined to the cupful of superfluous liquid drained from yesterday's stewed tomatoes, and a couple of cold boiled onions, can be wrought up. by means of a good roux and judicious seasoning, into a really palatable broth for the luncheon, which is often the nursery dinner.

Instead of throwing away bones and the outside slices of roast and boiled, the gristly remnants of chops and steaks, the carcasses and stuffing of fowls, the tablespoonful of gravy and the tea-spoonful of white or brown sauce, the single cold potato, or beet, or turnip, or boiled egg left from to-day's meals, study possibilities - especially broth ward.