Fish Soup

1 pound any boiled fish, - salmon, cod, or halibut. 1 quart milk. 1 slice onion.

1 tablespoonful butter.

2 tablespoonfuls flour. 1 teaspoonful salt.

1 saltspoonful pepper.

Cook the fish in boiling salted water, until it flakes easily. Drain it, remove the skin and bones, and rub through a coarse strainer. Cook the onion with one quart of milk ten minutes, remove the onion, and thicken the milk with the flour and butter cooked together. Add the seasoning and fish. Let it boil up once and serve.

PuréE Of Canned Salmon

Remove the oil, bones, and skin from half a can of salmon. Chop the salmon very fine. Boil one quart of milk, and season and thicken it as for fish soup. Add the salmon, and when heated it is ready to serve.

Lobster Soup, Or Bisque Of Lobster

2 pounds lobster. 1 quart milk.

1 tablespoonful butter.

2 tablesp. flour or cornstarch.

1 teaspoonful salt. 1 saltspoonful white pepper. ¼ saltspoonful cayenne pepper. 1 pint water.

Remove the meat of the lobster from the shell, and cut the tender pieces into quarter-inch dice. Put the ends of the claw meat and any other tough, hard parts, with the bones of the body, into one pint of cold water, and boil twenty minutes, adding more water as it boils away. Put the coral on a piece of paper, and dry it in the oven. Boil one quart of milk, and thicken it with one tablespoonful of butter and two of flour or cornstarch. Boil ten minutes. Strain the water from the bones and add it to the milk. Add the salt and pepper, using more if high seasoning be desired. Rub the dried coral through a strainer, using enough to give the soup a bright pink color. Put the green fat and lobster dice into the tureen, and strain the boiling soup over them. Serve immediately.

If you do not like so much of the lobster in the soup, chop it all very fine, boil it with the milk, and rub it through a squash or gravy strainer. Many like the additional thickening of half a cup of fine cracker crumbs.

This soup may also be varied by using one pint of stock, either chicken or veal, and one pint of milk; or by the addition of force-meat balls made in the following manner: Cut only half of the meat into dice; chop the remainder, and pound it to a fine paste with the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, one teaspoonful of butter, a little salt, and pepper; beat one raw egg, and add enough of it to moisten the paste so that it may easily be made into balls the size of a nutmeg; let them simmer in the soup about five minutes, just enough to cook the egg.

Lobster Soup, No. 2

The meat of two small lobsters, cut fine, one pint of cream, one pint of milk. Simmer twenty minutes. Add one table-spoonful of flour wet in cold milk. Salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Just before serving add half a cup of butter, cut into small pieces, and stir till it is entirely absorbed. Strain,-and serve very hot.

Oyster Soup

1 quart oysters.

1 pint milk.

1 tablespoonful butter.

2 tablespoonfuls flour.

Salt to taste.

½ saltspoonful pepper.

Put the milk on to boil in the double boiler, while you prepare the oysters. Place a colander over a pan. Put the oysters in a large bowl, and pour over them one cup of water. Take up each oyster with the fingers, to make sure no pieces of shell adhere to it, and drain in the colander. Strain the oyster liquor, which has drained from the colander, through the finest strainer. Put it on to boil. Remove the scum, and when clear put in the oysters. Let them simmer, but not boil, until they begin to grow plump and the edges to curl or separate. Strain the liquor into the milk, and put the oysters where they will keep hot, but not cook. Thicken the milk with the butter and flour, which have been cooked together; add salt and pepper to taste (the amount of salt depending upon the saltness of the oysters). Boil five minutes; add the oysters and serve at once. This receipt may be varied by boiling one cup of fine chopped celery and a small slice of onion with the milk ten minutes; then straining and thickening it with half a cup of powdered cracker. Add the butter, the seasoning, and the parboiled oysters. Serve at once.

Oyster Stew is made like oyster soup, without the thickening.

Clam Soup

½ peck clams in the shell.

Salt to taste.

1 saltspoonful pepper.

¼ saltspoonful cayenne pepper.

1 tablespoonful chopped onion.

1 tablespoonful chopped parsley.

1 heaping tablespoonful butter.

2 heaping tablespoonfuls flour. 1 pint milk or cream.

Prepare the clams by boiling in the shells, and cutting as directed for clam chowder, keeping the soft part separate from the hard. Pour off one quart of the clam liquor after it settles, being careful not to take any of the sediment; put it on to boil, and remove the scum. Add one pint of hot water, and season to taste with salt, pepper, cayenne, onion, and parsley. Put in the hard part of the clams. Simmer fifteen minutes, strain, and boil again, and when boiling thicken with the flour cooked in the butter. Add the hot milk or cream, and the soft part of the clams; serve at once, with crackers and pickles.

Another method of preparing clam soup, if needed quickly: Heat the clam broth to a boiling point; add the clams cut fine; season, and pour into the tureen over two eggs beaten up with the boiling milk.

The clam broth served hot with toasted crackers will often tempt a person with a capricious appetite.