Common-Sense Papers on Cookery

to boil it in water. When this is done it will be found that the water in which the fish is boiled, when it is cold, becomes quite a jelly. Now all this glutinous substance helps the soup. The soup must be again carefully strained, and, if it is necessary, cleared with a couple of whites of eggs, and then run through a jelly-bag a few times in front of the fire. The soup must then be placed in an enamelled saucepan, and the turtle-flesh added to it and boiled till it is as tender as thoroughly-cooked calf’s head; during this process of boiling, the soup will probably reduce itself to the desired quantity—viz., about three pints; to this must be then added a claret-glassful of madeira, which can now be obtained really good at forty shillings a dozen from any respectable wine-merchant. If, however, it is not thought necessary to have madeira bought on purpose—and it is a somewhat rare wine in the present day—a similar quantity of _good_ golden sherry will do. The soup is now done, and only requires a few drops of lemon-juice added to it after it is put in the tureen. One of the greatest mistakes in the use of wine for cooking is to think that _any_ wine will do. I have known cases where people have ordered a few bottles of what they chose to call cooking sherry from the grocers, and filthy stuff it has been—enough to spoil anything. If you think turtle soup does not deserve a glass of good wine, my advice is, do not make any. It is no use adding a glass of some horrible concoction called sherry or madeira, and then tasting the soup and saying, “Ah! it is not a bit like what we had at Francatelli’s.” Of course it is not, and you have only yourselves to blame. The same thing applies to real mock-turtle. “What does he mean by _real_ mock-turtle?” I can imagine you saying. But we live and learn. This is exactly the question I asked a waiter many years ago.