Soups Of Game, Poultry, Etc. 58. - Venison Soup. (English.)

Take four pounds of freshly killed venison cut off from the bones, and one pound of ham in small slices. Add an onion minced, and black pepper to your taste. Put only as much water as will cover it, and stew it gently for an hour, keeping the pot closely covered. Then skim it well, and pour in a quart of boiling water. Add a head of celery cut into small pieces, and three blades of mace. Boil it gently two and a half hours; then put in one fourth of a pound of butter, divided into small pieces, and rolled in flour, and add half a pint of port or Madeira wine. Let it boil a quarter of an hour longer, and send it to table with the meat in it.

Or:- Take a breast of venison, cut it in small pieces, and stew it gently in brown gravy soup. Serve it with roots cut in dice and French beans in diamonds, adding two glasses of port wine when first put on.

The head of the deer chopped in pieces, and the flesh stewed to a jelly, is also an excellent addition to the soup.

59. - Venison Soup

Cut all the meat off a forequarter and shoulder of venison, put it into a pot with two gallons of water, a large onion, a head of celery, and some salt. Simmer it very slowly for forty-eight hours. Break all the bones and put them in an earthen pot just covered with water; add a little salt, cloves, mace, and red pepper. Place the pot in the oven, set in a larger vessel of water, and let them stew as long as the soup.

Strain the soup clear, and add the juice of the bones. Color the soup with a little flour and a lump of butter as large as a walnut, browned in the frying-pan. Boil it up quickly, and throw in half a pint of port wine.

67. - Rice Cream. (Ude.)

This is flour of rice, which you make yourself in the following manner. Take a pound of rice, well washed in different waters, and drained and wiped with a clean towel. Let it get quite dry, then pound and shake it through a sieve. Take one or two spoonfuls of this flour, and dilute it with broth, rather cold than hot. All this time have some broth on the fire; throw the flour of rice thus diluted into the broth, and keep stirring till you find the soup is not too thick and may boil without the rice burning. This same kind of rice-flour may serve for souffles, or puffs, of the second course.

* This soup is never seen in this country; it requires a very deep and very large dish.

+ Formerly I used roasted chicken to make this potage, but I have found this new method cheaper, and not so subject to curdle as the other method.

70. - Hare Soup

An old hare is fitted only for soup or jugging. To render it into soup let it be cleaned, cut into pieces, add a pound and a half or two pounds of beef, to which there is little or no fat; place it at the bottom of the pan; add two or three slices of ham or bacon, or a little of both, a couple of onions, and some sweet herbs; add four quarts of toiling water, let it stew to shreds, strain off the soup and take away the fat; reboil it, add a spoonful of soy or Harvey's sauce, send to the table with a few force-meat balls.