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

addition of salt until they are soft enough to rub through a sieve with a potato masher. After they are rubbed through the sieve put them again into the soup kettle with a tablespoonful of butter and a tablespoonful of flour rubbed to a smooth paste. Stir the soup over the fire until the butter and flour are entirely dissolved; then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper and let it boil for two or three minutes. While it is boiling cut two slices of stale bread--bakers' bread is the best, or very light home-made bread--in little dice about half an inch square. Put a couple of tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying pan over the fire and let the butter begin to brown, then throw the dice of stale bread into the butter and stir the bread until it is brown. Take it out of the butter with a skimmer, if it has not absorbed all the butter, and lay it for a moment on brown paper, and then put it on a hot dish to send to the table with the soup. Do not put the bread into the soup unless you are going to serve at once, because it will soften a little; but you will find that fried bread will soften less quickly than toasted bread. A great many people put small squares of toast in the pea soup, but that softens at once. If you have a frying kettle which you use for doughnuts or fritters, or anything of that sort, partly full of frying fat, you can heat it and fry the bread in that instead of frying it with the butter in a frying pan. Have the fat smoking hot; the bread browns very quickly; take it out on a skimmer and lay it on a brown paper for a moment; then it is ready for the soup. These little fried crusts of bread are called _croutons_ or crusts in the cookery books. I am going to add an onion fried in butter to the soup to-day. Put that in, if you