A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

is a good hearty soup for every-day use; in fact it is so hearty that you can make the bulk of a meal using this and bread or potatoes. When all the vegetables are quite tender then the soup simply is to be served. Now, while I am preparing the soup, I want to say a little about the value of soup as a food. This comes properly into our afternoon course of instruction. Many of the ladies may not have thought of it in precisely the connection in which I am going to speak of it. Habitually, Americans do not use soup. Some have grown gradually accustomed to have soup as a part of their every-day dinner, but as a rule people have it once or twice a week. I am speaking now of average families. As a matter of fact, it ought to be used every day, because it is not only a very easy form in which to obtain nourishment, but you obtain from soup that which you would not get from any other dish; that is, you get every particle of the nourishment there is in the ingredients which you put into the soup. You can make a perfectly nutritious and palatable meal with soup at about one-half the cost of a meal without soup, because the soup, if it is savory, will be eaten with a relish; and it will satisfy the appetite for two reasons; the first I have already spoken of--because you get every particle of nourishment there is in the ingredients; and second, because directly you eat it--that is, directly it reaches the stomach, some of its nutritious liquid properties will begin to be absorbed at once. They pass directly into the system, by the process which is known in physiology as _osmosis_--that is, absorption by the coats of the stomach; so that the liquid part of the food is actually absorbed and passes into the circulation in less than five minutes after you have eaten it. A very familiar illustration of that fact was made by Sir Henry Thompson several years