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

rather a decided flavor. You want to use enough vegetables to flavor the soup, if it is a white vegetable. If it is a vegetable that has a decided color like carrots, for instance, or beets,--by the way, beets make a delicious soup, and a very pretty one is made with spinach,--you want to use enough to color the soup. The beets, boiled so that all the color is preserved, and then rubbed through a sieve, make a very pretty soup. One of our New York pupils calls it a "pink velvet soup." Spinach makes a very nice green soup if it is properly boiled. We shall try to get some spinach for one of the lessons. We have _puree_ of spinach on our list, and if we can get any spinach I will show you how to boil it so as to keep its color. BOILED POTATOES. The boiling of potatoes is a very simple operation, but there is a good deal of talking to be done in connection with it. It does not make any difference whether you use hot water or cold in boiling potatoes. What you want to watch is the stage at which you take the potatoes out of the water. That is what determines whether they are to be mealy or not. The cause of the potatoes being mealy is the rupture of the starch cells and the escape of the steam just at the right moment, just when the potatoes are tender; and if you leave them in the water after they are tender, then the membrane of the starch cells being broken permits the water to penetrate; even if the skins are not cut or broken, the moisture in the starch cells themselves will condense and make the potato heavy, so that you want to give the steam a chance to escape as soon as the potatoes are tender. If you will do that you are sure of mealy potatoes, provided the potatoes are ripe. Unripe potatoes, or new potatoes, or sprouted or frosted potatoes, you cannot well make mealy, because the