Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery: A Manual of Cheap and Wholesome Diet

dirt and floury taste, then throw it immediately into about a quart of clear soup. The vermicelli must be taken from the boiling water and thrown into the boiling soup at once. If you were to boil the vermicelli, strain it off, and put it by to add to the soup, you would find it would stick together in one lump and be spoilt. VERMICELLI SOUP, WHITE.--The vermicelli must be thrown into white soup instead of clear soup. (_See_ WHITE SOUP.) WHITE SOUP.--Just as in ordinary white soup the secret of success is to have some strongly reduced stock, so in vegetarian white soup it is essential that we should have a small quantity of liquid strongly impregnated with the flavour of vegetables. For this purpose, place an onion, the white part of a head of celery, and a slice of turnip in a stew-pan with a little butter, and fry them till they are tender without becoming brown. Now add sufficient water to enable you to boil them, and let the water boil away till very little is left. Now rub this through a wire sieve and add it to a quart of milk in which a couple of bay-leaves have been boiled. Thicken the soup with a little white roux, add a suspicion of nutmeg, and also, if possible, a little cream. Flavour with pepper and salt. Serve fried or toasted bread with the soup. CHAPTER II. SAUCES. SAUCE ALLEMANDE.--Take a pint of butter sauce--(_see_ BUTTER SAUCE)--and add to it four yolks of eggs. In order to do this you must beat up the yolks separately in a basin and add the hot butter sauce gradually, otherwise the yolks of eggs will curdle and the sauce will be spoilt. In fact, it must be treated exactly like custard, and in warming up the sauce it is often a good plan, if you have no _bain-marie_, to put the sauce in a jug and place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water. The sauce should be flavoured with a little essence of mushroom if possible. Essence of mushroom