Potato Puree. (Without Meat.)

Boil and mash very soft and fine twelve potatoes. Heat one pint of milk in a saucepan, add a parboiled onion (chopped), and cook slowly ten minutes. Strain out the onion; thicken the milk with two tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed in one of flour, boil three minutes to cook the flour, and put into the soup-pot with the mashed potato, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, pepper and salt to taste. Cook three minutes, beat up well, and serve.

If you can spare a pint of good stock you can leave out the milk, thicken the stock with a white roux, and having cooked the stock and potato together for five minutes, pour the puree into the tureen upon two well-beaten eggs. Put in your egg-beater, incorporate the ingredients with a few swift whirls, and serve.

Browned Potato Puree

Put three tablespoonfuls of good dripping into your soup-kettle and fry in it one dozen potatoes which have been pared, quartered, and laid in cold water for an hour. With them should go into the boiling fat a large sliced onion. Cook fast but do not let them scorch.

When they are browned add two quarts of boiling water, cover the pot, and simmer until the potatoes are soft and broken. Rub through a colander back into the kettle and stir in a great spoonful of butter rolled in brown flour, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

In another saucepan make a sugarless custard of a cup of boiling milk and two well-beaten eggs; take from the fire and beat fast for one minute, put into a heated tureen, beat in the potato, and serve. This is a German puree, and very savory.

Puree Of Split Pease

One quart of split pease soaked in soft water all night; one pound of streaked salt pork, cut into thin strips; two pounds of beef-bones cracked well; two stalks of celery, and one onion, chopped ; salt and pepper to taste ; four quarts of cold water; a sliced lemon. Put soaked pease, pork, bones, and vegetables over the fire, with the water, and boil slowly for four hours, until the liquid is reduced nearly one-half. Strain through a colander, rubbing the pease into a puree into the vessel below. Season, simmer ten minutes over the fire, and pour over the lemon, sliced and pared and laid in the tureen.

If the soup is watery, bind with a brown roux stirred in before the last simmer.

Puree Of Mock Turtle Soup Beans

One quart of mock turtle soup beans ; one onion chopped ; four stalks of celery, cut small; two quarts of liquor in which corned beef has boiled; pepper; dice of fried bread; two lemons; one quart of cold water ; one tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Soak the beans over night. In the morning pour on a quart of cold water, and set them where they will heat for an hour without burning. Stir up often from the bottom. At the end of this time add the beef liquor (after taking off the fat), the onions, and the celery. Cook gently three hours until the beans are boiled to pieces. Strain, rubbing through a colander, season, put back into the kettle, boil up, season with pepper, stir in the butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen. Pare the lemons, slice thin, and lay on the surface of the soup before serving.

Green Pea And Tomato Puree

Cook one pint of green pease and the same of tomatoes, and a small onion, one hour in a quart of weak stock. Rub through a colander. Return to the fire with two tablespoon fuls of butter rubbed into one of flour, a teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of minced parsley.

Boil five minutes, and pour upon a handful of fried bread-dice in the bottom of your tureen.

Rice And Curry Puree

Boil, in a quart of heated chicken stock, a half cupful of soaked raw rice, a minced onion, and a tablespoonful of chopped pars-ley, for half an hour, or until the rice is tender. Stir in a good teaspoonful of curry powder; cook one minute, and turn into a tureen.

A pleasing accompaniment to this, or any preparation of curry, is an ice-cold banana, laid with a silver fruit-knife at each place. The eater strips back the skin and takes a slice of the cooling fruit between every few mouthfuls of the pungent curry.

This is an East Indian fashion and much in favor with all who have tried it.