Chicken Soup+

2 young fowls, or one full-grown. 1/2 lb. corned ham. 1 gallon of water.

Cut the fowls into pieces as for fricassee. Put these with the ham into the pot with a quart of water, or enough to cover them fairly. Stew for an hour, if the fowls are tender; if tough, until you can cut easily into the breast. Take out the breasts, leaving the rest of the meat in the pot, and add the remainder of the water - boiling hot. Keep the soup stewing slowly while you chop up the white meat you have selected. Rub the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs smooth in a mortar or bowl, moistening to a paste with a few spoonfuls of the soup. Mix with these a handful of fine bread-crumbs and the chopped meat, and make it into small balls. When the soup has boiled in all, two hours and a half, if the chicken be reduced to shreds, strain out the meat and bones. Season with salt and white pepper, with a bunch of chopped parsley. Drop in the prepared force-meat, and after boiling ten minutes to incorporate the ingredients well, add, a little at a time, a pint of rich milk thickened with flour. Boil up once and serve.

A chicken at least a year old would make better soup than a younger fowl.

Venison Soup+

3 lbs. of venison. What are considered the inferior pieces will do. 1 lb. corned ham or salt pork. 1 onion. 1 head of celery.

Cut up the meat; chop the vegetables, and put on with just enough water to cover them, keeping on the lid of the pot all the while, and stew slowly for one hour. Then add two quarts of boiling water, with a few blades of mace and a dozen whole peppers. Or, should you prefer, a little cayenne. Boil two hours longer, salt, and strain. Return the liquor to the pot; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, thicken with a tablespoonful of browned flour wet into a smooth thin paste with cold water; add a tablespoonful of walnut or mushroom catsup, a teaspoonful of Worcestershire or other pungent sauce, and a generous glass of Madeira or brown Sherry.

Hare Or Rabbit Soup

Dissect the rabbit, crack the bones, and prepare precisely as you would the venison soup, only putting in three small onions instead of one, and a bunch of sweet herbs. Hares which are too tough to be cooked in any other way, make excellent game soup. Also, the large gray squirrel of the Middle and Southern States.

OX-Tail Soup

1 ox-tail.

2 lbs. lean beef. 4 carrots.

3 onions. Thyme.

Cut the tail into several pieces and fry brown in butter. Slice the onions and two carrots, and when you remove the ox-tail from the frying-pan, put in these and brown them also. When done, tie them in a bag with a bunch of thyme and drop into the soup-pot. Lay the pieces of ox-tail in the same; then the meat cut into small slices. Grate over them the two whole carrots, and add four quarts of cold water, with pepper and salt. Boil from four to six hours, in proportion to the size of the tail. Strain fifteen minutes before serving it, and thicken with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour. Boil ten minutes longer.