359. Ox-Cheek Soup

Procure a fresh ox-cheek, and put it to braize in a small stockpot with a knuckle of veal and some roast-beef bones, fill the pot up from the boiling stockpot, or with water; garnish with the same complement of stock vegetables used for ox-tail soup (No. 354), adding six cloves, a blade of mace, and a few peppercorns. As soon as the ox-cheek is done, take the meat off the cheek-bone, and put it in press between two dishes. Strain off the broth, adding to it a ladleful of gravy to color it, and proceed to clarify it with a couple of whites of eggs. While the consomme is clarifying, trim the ox-cheek and cut it into neat scollops an inch square and half an inch thick; put these into a small soup-pot and add to them some small carrots and turnips cut in fancy shapes and boiled in a little broth, a lump of sugar, and also a dozen and a half very small white button onions. Strain the clarified consomme thus prepared into the soup-pot, and having allowed the soup to boil a few minutes by the side of the stove-fire, just before serving, add two dozen blanched Brussels sprouts, and a pinch of minionette pepper, and send to table.

360. deer's-head soup a la chasseur

Procure a young deer's head, perfectly fresh, scald it and cleanse it thoroughly; proceed then to prepare the soup in exactly the same manner as for mock-turtle; just before sending to table, add two dozen small quenelles made with deer's flesh, together with some small scollops of deer simmered in a little fresh butter and fine herbs.

* This will be found a very useful soup in those parts of the country where deer abound.

Take care that the soup does not boil after the scollops are added to it.

361. Grouse Soup A La Montagnarde

Roast off three brace of young grouse, take the whole of the meat from the bones, carefully cutting out the lower part of their backs, which being bitter, must be rejected. Set aside four of the fillets, cut them into scollops, to be put in the soup afterward. Put the carcasses and bones of the grouse into a stewpan with half a bottle of Sherry, a carrot, onion, celery, a few cloves, a couple of shalots, and a blade of mace; set these to simmer gently on the fire for ten minutes, after which add two quarts of good stock, and having allowed it to boil an hour and a half, strain it off into a basin. Pound the whole of the meat yielded by the grouse, excepting the four fillets before named, mixing with it a little rice boiled in broth; moisten with the grouse essence, and pass it through the tammy into a puree, and put it into a small soup-pot. Just before dinner-time, warm the puree, taking the usual precaution to prevent it from curdling, pour it into the soup-tureen containing the scollops of the fillets of grouse, and three dozen very small quenelles of the same.