With a keen appreciation of the importance of the subject, and of the difficulties with which it is surrounded, I now proceed to place before my readers a little collection of hints and wrinkles about soup-making which I have gathered from time to time from a variety of sources. Some, by practical experience, gained by bond fide work in the kitchen, some given to me by friends, and some picked out of different works on the culinary art. In my extracts from books, I shall endeavour to record, as much as possible, such advice only as I have tested myself, and I shall try to make my gleanings simple and concise.

To begin then; there are, we know, three distinct classes of soups :- the clear, the thick, and the puree. We recognise clear soups in the menu under different names. For instance, we meet consomme de volaille, and potage a la printaniere, but whereas the word consomme is invariably applied to clear soups, we find potage frequently used for thick also, to wit:- potage a la Reine, potage a la bonne femme, etc. Let us distinguish between thick soups and purees in this way:- The former owe their consistency to the addition of some artificial thickening, such as flour, egg yolks, etc., the latter, on the other hand, derive their thick characteristic from the ingredients that compose them being rubbed through a tamis, or through a wire sieve, and, communicated to the stock in the form of a thick pulp, as in the case of puree d' artichauts, puree de legumes, puree de gibier, etc. A soup partaking of the character of a thinnish puree helped up by artificial aid in the way of thickening, is called by some writers a potage a la puree. The bisque again is a puree, strictly speaking, of cray fish (aux ecrevisses) or of lobster (de homard), but it can be made successfully with crab, prawns, and shrimps; indeed a nice bisque can be made with any fish. - So much for names.

Let us now turn our attention to beef consomme for we may regard it as the foundation upon which nearly every soup is based.

"Stock," says a capital writer on cookery, "is to a cook what the medium or the water is to the painter in oils or in water colours. It may be defined, generally speaking, as a solution in water of the nutritive, and sapid elements contained in meat and bones: salt and spices added to it to make it savoury, and if to this you add the flavour of various vegetables, you have soup."

We must remember, however, to start with, that soup in India must be made in one day. We cannot fall back upon the never-empty stock pot of the English kitchen : our's must be made daily, and, to guard against waste, only in sufficient quantity for the day's consumption. In saying this I have, of course, mainly before me the climate of Madras, and of the plains of Southern India. At the Hill stations and during the cold weather in the northern part of the country, the method obtaining in British households may, no doubt, with care, and slight modification, be followed.

Our soup, then, being actually an ephemeral production, how should we proceed? "For the type of all stock-making," says the G. C. "there can be no better recipe taken then that of the French pot-au-feu" let us therefore consider attentively the following recipe for that most valuable of culinary operations.

Put a piece of soup-meat, - say of four pounds weight, in the proportion of three pounds of flesh to one of bone, - (the recipe can, of course, be followed by adding or reducing as you may require but preserving like proportion) tightly bound with a string, with two ounces of salt and the bones separately broken up, into a stock pot filled with water, so as to completely cover the meat. Put the pot by the side of the fire and let it become gradually heated. As this takes place, a scum will form upon the surface which must be carefully removed as it rises. When nearly boiling, a coffee cupful of cold water should be thrown into the pot to accelerate the rising of the scum. The clearness of the soup will depend remember, upon all the scum being taken off, and upon the water being kept from boiling point until it is all removed. This having been done; put into the saucepan the following vegetables which should have been previously carefully cleaned and cut up, viz.:- a couple of large white onions, a clove of garlic, two large or three small carrots, two or three turnips, six leeks, one head of celery, a bunch of curly parsley, and two cloves in the onion. Then put in, tied up in a piece of muslin, some thyme, marjoram, and a handful of whole pepper, - a tea-spoonful each of dried thyme and marjoram will be quite enough. It will be found that by adding the vegetables, the boiling of the broth will be thrown back; as soon however as the bubbling recommences, watch the vegetables carefully, and remove them when they are done. If you leave them in the stock pot after they have been cooked, they will spoil the soup. Remove the muslin bag also. You can next put in a dessert-spoonful of sugar, a table-spoonful of Harvey sauce, and two of mushroom ketchup; when the pot-au-feu is, so to speak, thus completed, it must be left to simmer slowly from three to four hours. The soup should now be strained into a basin and left to get cool, so that any remaining fat may be effectually skimmed off. The clear liquor is then fit to be warmed and served with maccaroni, bread sippets, or vegetables, etc., according to the kind of soup you wish to have.

Observe that in order to carry out this recipe, an open, roomy vessel is necessary; a closed pot like a digester must not be used.

This is, to my mind, the simplest recipe you can follow to achieve a bright clear consomme. It is, of course, imperative that you proceed exactly as described. First, the meat covered with cold water, and brought very slowly to the boil, being very carefully skimmed the while. Next, when the skimming is completed, the vegetables, - to be removed when done, the little bouquet of sweet herbs, the sugar, and a small allowance of sauce and ketchup. Now, a period of three hours to simmer, followed by straining. The liquor you have after this is actually beef consomme or strong broth quite clear and pale.