Fine Onion Soup

Take a fine fresh neck of mutton, and to make a large tureen of soup, you must have a breast of mutton also. Let the meat be divided into chops, season it with a little salt, and put it in a soup-pot - allow a quart of water to each pound of mutton. Boil, and skim it till no more scum arises, and the meat drops in rags from the bones. In a small pot boil in milk a dozen large onions, (or more,) adding pepper, mace, nutmeg, and some bits of fresh butter rolled in flour. The onions should previously be peeled and sliced. When they are quite soft, transfer them to the soup, with the milk, etc, in which they were cooked. Give them one boil in the soup. Then pour it off, or strain it into the tureen, omitting all the sediment, and bones, and shreds of meat. Make some nice slices of toast, dipping each in boiling water, and trimming off all the crust. Cut the toast into small squares, lay them in the bottom of the tureen, and pour the soup upon them. Where there is no objection to onions it will be much liked.

If milk is plenty use it instead of water for onion soup. White soups are always best when made with milk.

Turnip Soup

For a very small family take a neck of mutton, and divide it into steaks, omitting all the fat. For a family of moderate size, take a breast as well as a neck. Put them into a soup-pot with sufficient water to cover them, and let them stew till well browned. Skim them carefully. Then pour on more water, in the proportion of a pint to each pound of meat, and add eight or ten turnips pared and sliced thin, with a very little pepper and salt. Let the soup boil till the turnips are all dissolved, and the meat in rags. Add, towards the last, some bits of butter rolled in flour, and in five minutes afterwards the soup will be done. Carefully remove all the bits of meat and bone before you send the soup to table. It will be found very good, and highly flavored with the turnips.

Onion soup may be made in the same manner. Parsnip soup also, cutting the parsnips into small bits. Or all three - turnips, onions and parsnips, may be used together.

Parsnip Soup

The meat for this soup may either be fresh beef, mutton, or fresh venison. Remove the fat, cut the meat into pieces, add a little salt, and put it into a soup-pot, with an allowance of rather less than a quart of water to each pound. Prepare some fine large parsnips, by first scraping and splitting them, and cutting them into pieces; then putting them into a frying pan, and frying them brown, in fresh butter or nice drippings. When the soup has been boiled till the meat is all in rags, and well skimmed - put into it the fried parsnips and let them boil about ten minutes, but not till they break or go to pieces. Just before you put in the parsnips, stir in a table-spoonful of thickening made with butter and flour, mixed to a smooth paste. When you put it into the tureen to go to table, be sure to leave in the pot all the shreds of meat and bits of bone.