A guide to modern cookery

eggs (added one after the other), the necessary quantity of water, and one oz. of sugar. Keep this preparation in a lukewarm place to let it ferment, and stir it with a wooden spoon before using it to immerse the solids. _Remarks._—Batter for fruit fritters may contain a few tablespoonfuls of brandy, in which case an equal quantity of the water must be suppressed. 235—PROVENÇALE (preparation for stuffing cutlets à la Provençale) Put one pint of Béchamel into a vegetable-pan and reduce it until it has become quite dense. Thicken it with the yolks of four eggs, and finish it away from the fire with a crushed piece of garlic as large as a pea, and one-quarter lb. of grated cheese. CHAPTER X =Leading Culinary Operations= 236—THE PREPARATION OF SOUPS The nutritious liquids known under the name of Soups are of comparatively recent origin. Indeed, as they are now served, they do not date any further back than the early years of the nineteenth century. The soups of old cookery were, really, complete dishes, wherein the meats and vegetables used in their preparation were assembled. They, moreover, suffered from the effects of the general confusion which reigned in the menus of those days. These menus seem to have depended in no wise, for their items, upon the progressive satisfaction of the consumers’ appetites, and a long procession of dishes was far more characteristic of the meal than their judicious order and diversity. In this respect, as in so many others, Carême was the reformer, and, if he were not, strictly speaking, the actual initiator of the changes which ushered in our present methods, he certainly had a large share in the establishment of the new theories. Nevertheless, it took his followers almost a century to bring soups to the perfection of to-day, for modern cookery has replaced those stodgy dishes of yore by comparatively simple and savoury preparations which are veritable wonders of delicacy and taste. Now, my attention has been called to the desirability of drawing up some sort of classification of soups, if only with the view of