† The concentration of flavour in celery seed is such, that half a drachm of it will impregnate a gallon of soup with more relish than two or three heads of the fresh vegetable. This valuable acquisition to the soup-pot deserves to be more universally known.

* If you have not orange or lemon juice, a little French wine vinegar is the best substitute for it.

† The juice of the Seville orange is to be preferred to lemon-juice, the flavour is finer, and the acid milder.

‡ The erudite editor of the "Almanach des Gourmands" vol. ii. p. SO, tells us, that ten folio volumes would not contain the receipts of all the soups that have been invented in that grand school of good eating, the Parisian kitchen.

Truffles and morels are also set down as a part of most receipts. These have a very rich, high flavour, and are delicious additions to some dishes, or sent up as a stew by themselves, when they are fresh and fine; but in this state they are not served up half a dozen times in a year at the first nobleman's table in the kingdom: when they are dried, they generally lose their flavour, and serve only to soak up good gravy, from which they take more taste than they give. The great art of composing a rich soup is, so to proportion the several ingredients one to another, that no particular taste be stronger than the rest; but to produce such a fine, harmonious, and delicious relish, that the whole is delightful: this requires a very judicious combination of the materials, and constitutes the "chef d oeuvre" of culinary science.

* Soy, cavice-coratcb, anchovies, curry powder, browning, catsup, pickle liquor, beer, and wine, are occasionally very convenient auxiliaries to soups, etc.: the proportion of wine should not exceed a large wineglassful to a quart of soup, though much larger quantities are ordered in many books: this is as much as can be admitted, without the vinous flavour becoming remarkably predominant.

† Many a good dish is spoiled, by the cook not knowing the proper use of this, which is to give a flavour, and not to be predominant to the other ingredients: a morsel mashed with the point of a knife, and stired in, is enough.

‡ For preparing these, you will find the best receipts in the chapter of sauces, etc.

In the first place, take care that the roots and herbs be perfectly well cleaned, and proportion the water not only to the quantity of meat *, and oilier ingredients, but to the sort of fire you intend to use. If you have a brisk fire, a great deal more water must be put in than you intend to have broth; but if it be to stew gently, then little more water need be put in at first than is expected at the end; for when the saucepan is covered close, and the fire gentle, very little is wasted. In most cases, this gentle way of stewing is incomparably the best, and both the meat and the soup eat the belter for it.

* Generally a pound of meat to a quart of water, for soups; and double that quantity for gravies.

Always dish up your soups the last thing. If it be gravy soup, it will skin over if you let it stand; if it be peas-soup, it often settles, and the top looks thin.

By quick and strong boiling, not only all the volatile and finest parts of the ingredients are evaporated, and fly off with the steam, but the coarser parts are rendered soluble; so you lose the good, and get the bad. The slower they boil the better. Soups will generally take from three to six hours.

If possible, always prepare your broths and soups the evening before you want them. This will give you more time to attend to the rest of your dinner next day; and when the soup is cold, fat may be much more easily and completely removed from the surface of it: when you decant it, take care not to disturb the settlings at the bottom of the vessel, which are so fine, they will escape through your tammis, or sieve, and are only to be got rid of in this manner. The full flavour of the ingredients can only be extracted by very long and slow simmering; during which, take care to prevent the evaporation of the steam, by covering your pot closely: perhaps the best stew pots are the cast iron digesters*, made by Jackson and Moser, in Greek Street, Soho: in these, all the nutritive qualities of the meat are preserved, the steam being prevented escaping by the lids fitting exactly into a screw grove.

Bread raspings, bread crumbs †, biscuit powder, isinglass, potatoe mucilage, fat skimmings and flour, or flour and butter, or flour and water rubbed well together, are the materials commonly used ‡ to thicken §, and give a body to our soups. To their very rich gravies, etc, the French add the breasts of partridges and fowls, beaten to a pulp in a marble mortar, a piece of the beef you have boiled to make your broth or gravy, pounded in the like manner, with a bit of butter and flour, and gradually well incorporated with the gravy or soup, will be found an excellent substitute for these more expensive articles. Meat from which broth has been made, and all the juice has been extracted, is then excellently well prepared for frothing, and quite as good as that which has been baked till it is dry*, and pounded, etc, seasoned in the usual manner, will be an elegant and savoury luncheon or supper dish, and extremely useful, as we have before observed, to thicken soups, sauces, etc, and costs nothing but the trouble of preparing it, which is very little, and you get a delicious relish for sandwiches,etc, of what heretofore has been by the poorest housekeeper considered the perquisite of the cat.

* The water in the digester is never made to boil, so there is no exhalation of volatile parts; and although the solution is made with great success, and may be to any degree required, yet if that is not carried very far, the meat may be rendered very tender, while it retains its most sapid parts, and still remain eatable, and useful in the family.

† To thicken with bread: take the crumb of a French roll, boil it in a little of the soup, beat it in a mortar, and rub it through a sieve, or coarse cloth, pour this into your soup, and give it a boil up afterwards.

‡ In the proportion of a teacupful to a quart of soup.

§ Whatever materials are used for this purpose, must be gradually mixed with the soup, till they are thoroughly incorporated with it; if it is at all lumpy, pass it through a fine hair sieve.

It is a good plan always to keep some spare broth, lest your soup liquor waste in boiling, and get too thick. If it is too thin, or too weak, take off the cover of your soup-pot, and let it boil till some of the watery part of it has evaporated, or add some of the thickening materials we have be-fore mentioned; and always have at hand some browning. This simple preparation is much better than any of the compounds bearing that name, as it merely colours your sauce or soup, without interfering with its flavour. When soups and gravies are kept from day to day, in hot weather, they should be warmed up every day, and put into fresh scalded tureens, or pans; in temperate weather, every other day may be enough. We hope enough has now been said, to put the common cook into possession of the whole arcana of soupmaking, without much trouble to herself, or expense to her employers; and that it will not be said, in future, that an Englishman only knows how to make soup in his stomach, by swilling down a large quantity of ale, or porter, to quench the thirst occasioned by the meat he eats: like the ingenious foreigners he may now make his soup in a pot, and thus save his principal viscera a great deal of trouble.

* If the gravy is not completely drained from it, the article potted will turn sour in a couple of days.

*** In the following Receipts we have directed the spices and flavouring to be added at the usual time; but it would greatly improve the soups, if the spices, etc, as well as wine, which is used to finish them, were not put in above ten or fifteen minutes before they are done, especially if the spices are pounded; whole spice may have twenty or thirty minutes. A continued heat soon dissipates the spirit of wine, and evaporates the aroma and favour of the spices and herbs.

Since writing the above, the following corroboration of my opinion was given me by that scientific culinary amateur, Apicius Coelius,junr.

"The great fault of ancient and of modern cookery has consisted in the employment of the various articles of seasoning or condiment, which, on the application of heat, have been evaporated, and, from the volatization of their more subtle parts, the true flavour of these substances have been destroyed. Wine, spices, anchovy, and many ingredients, when stewed for a considerable time, lose the best part of their flavour."

"A. C.junr."