This section is from the "The Home Science Cook Book" book, by Mary J. Lincoln and Anna Barrows. Also available from Amazon: The home science cook book.
Peel and slice four large onions, scald, and drain. Cover with cold water, and simmer till very soft. Mash through a vegetable strainer, add one cup of milk, and heat again. Cook one tablespoon of flour in one tablespoon of butter, and gradually add the liquid from the onion till smooth and thin enough to pour into the soup. Season with one teaspoon of salt and one saltspoon of pepper. Beat one egg, add one cup of cream, and stir in quickly as it is taken from the fire.
Stew tomato, canned or fresh, with a few peppercorns and bits of bay-leaf, mace, parsley, etc., for half an hour, then strain. Add one saltspoon of soda for each pint and mix with an equal quantity of thin white sauce and one cup of hot cream.
Peas that are too old and hard for the table may be used in soup. Cook one quart of peas in one pint of gently boiling water till soft. Mash through a sieve with the water. Add one pint of white sauce. Season with one-half teaspoon each of salt and sugar, one-fourth teaspoon of pepper, and if too thick add more hot milk.
In the same way prepare Lentils, Black Beans, and Split Peas after soaking and cooking for five or six hours. From one-half to one whole cup of dried peas or beans will be needed for each quart of soup.
Baked beans combined with some gravy from roast meat, flavored with tomato ketchup, and reduced with water to the right consistency, make a good soup. Thin slices of lemon and hard-boiled eggs often are used to garnish such soups.
Mix one cup of mashed potato with one pint of hot milk; add one cup of white sauce, flavor with salt, pepper, celery salt, and onion juice. Half potato and half white turnip also makes a good soup.
Mix one cup of cooked and sifted chestnuts with one pint of white stock and one pint of white sauce.
In one pint of chicken stock cook one-fourth cup of chopped celery and onion for fifteen minutes, or season with ceiery salt and onion juice. Mix the stock with an equal quantity of hot white sauce. Season, strain, and serve.
For a garnish use fine chopped parsley or yolks of hard-boiled eggs rubbed through a strainer.
This soup may be made thinner, and a little tapioca or sago cooked in it until transparent.
The head and bones of a three-pound cod or haddock will yield a pint or more of stock. Use this in place of the chicken stock above and omit the celery.
 
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