To fricassee Rabbits, brown.

Cut them into pieces as before directed, and fry them in butter of a light brown. Then put them into a stew-pan, with a pint of water, a slice of lemon, an anchovy, a large spoonful of browning, the same of catsup, a tea-spoonful of lemon pickle, and a little Cayenne pepper and salt. Stew them over a slow fire till they are enough; then thicken your gravy with butter and flour, and strain it. Dish up your rabbits, and pour the gravy over them. Garnish with sliced lemon.

To pot Rabbits.

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Cut up two or three young, but full grown ones, and take the leg-bones off at the thigh; pack them as closely as possible in a small pan, after seasoning them with pepper, mace, cayenne, salt, and allspice, all in very fine powder. Make the top as smooth as you can. Keep out the heads and the carcases, but take off the meat about the neck. Pat a good deal of butter, and bake the whole gently. Keep it two days in the pan; then shift it into small pots, adding butter. The livers also should be added, as they eat well.

To blanch Rabbit, Fowls, &c.

This is to set it on the fire in a small quantity of cold water, and let it boil: as soon as it boils, it is to be taken out, and put into cold water for a few minutes.

BROTHS, SOUPS, GRAVIES, AND SAUCES.

General Observations and Directions.

THE cook must pay continual attention to the condition of her stew-pans and soup-kettles, &c. which should be examined every time they are used. Their covers also must be kept perfectly clean, and well tinned; and the stew-pans not only on the inside, but about a couple of inches on the outside: many mischiefs arise from their getting out of repair; and if not kept

nicely tinned, all your good work will be in vain; the broths and soups will look green and dirty, taste bitter and poisonous, and will be spoiled both for the eye and palate.

Take care to be properly provided with sieves and tammis cloths, spoons, and ladles: make it a rule, without an exception, never to use them till they are well cleaned and thoroughly dried, nor any stew-pans, &c. without first washing them out with boiling water, and rubbing them well with a dry cloth and a little bran, to clean them from grease, sand, &c. or any bad smell they may have got since they were last used.

Never put by any soup, gravy, &c. in a metal utensil; in which, never keep any thing longer than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of cookery; the acid, vegetables, and fat, &c. employed in making them, are capable of dissolving them; therefore stone or earthen vessels should be used for this purpose.

Stew-pans and sauce-pans should be always bright on the upper rim, where the fire does not burn them but to scour them all over, is not only giving the cook needless trouble, but wearing out the vessels.

Lean juicy beef, mutton, or veal, form the basis of broth: procure those pieces which afford the most and the richest succulence, and as fresh killed as possible.

In general, it has been considered the best economy to use the cheapest and most inferior meats for soup, &c. and to boil it down till it is entirely destroyed, and hardly worth putting into the hog-tub. This is a false frugality. Buy good pieces of meat, and only stew them till they are done enough to be eaten.

Stale meat will make your broth grouty and bad tasted, and fat meat is only wasted. This only applies to those broths which are required to be perfectly clear. Immediately following these observations, will be given Dr. Kitchiner's receipt to make a cheap and highly nutritious barley broth, by which it will appear that fat and clarified drippings may be so combined with vegetable mucilage, as to afford, at the small cost of one penny per quart, a nourishing and palatable soup, fully adequate to satisfy appetite, and support strength: this will open a new source to those benevolent housekeepers, who are disposed to relieve the poor, and will show the industrious classes how much they have it in their power to assist them

selves, and rescue them from being objects of charity dependent on the precarious bounty of others, by teaching them how they may obtain a cheap, abundant, salubrious, and agreeable aliment for themselves and families.

This soup has the advantage of being very easily and very soon made, with no more fuel than is necessary to warm a room: those who have not tasted it, cannot imagine what a salubrious, savoury, and satisfying meal is produced by the judicious combination of cheap homely ingredients.

The art of composing a rich soup is so to proportion the several ingredients one to another, that no particular taste be stronger than the rest; but to produce such a line harmonious relish, that the whole is delightful, this requires that judicious combination of the materials which constitutes the chef-d'œuvrt of culinary science.

In the first place, take care that the roots and herbs be perfectly well cleaned; proportion the water to the quantity of meat, and other ingredients, generally a pound of meat to a quart of water, for soups; and double that quantity for gravies. If they stew gently, little more water need be put in at first, than is expected at the end; for when the pot is covered quite close, and the fire gentle, very little is wasted.

Gentle stewing is incomparably the best,—the meat is more tender, and the soup better flavoured.

It is of the first importance, that the cover of a soup kettle should fit very close, or the broth will evaporate before you are aware of it. The most essential parts are soon evaporated by quick boiling, without any benefit, except to fatten the fortunate cook who inhales them.

It is not only the fibres of the meat which nourish us, but the juices they contain; and these are not only extracted, but exhaled, if it be boiled fast in an open vessel: a succulent soup can never be made but in a well closed vessel, which preserves the nutritive parts by preventing their dissipation. This is a fact of which every intelligent person will soon perceive the importance.

Place your soup-pot over a moderate fire, which will make the water hot, without causing it to boil, for at least half an hour; if the water boils immediately, it will not penetrate the meat, and cleanse it from the clotted blood, and other matters

which ought to go off in scum; the meat will be hardened all over by violent heat, will shrink up as if it was scorched, and give hardly any gravy; on the contrary, by keeping the water a certain time heating without boiling, the meat swells, becomes tender, its fibres are dilated, and it yields a quantity of scum, which must be taken off as soon as it appears.

It is not till after a good half hour's hot infusion, that we may mend the fire, and make the pot boil: still continue to remove the scum, and when no more appears, put in the vegetables, &c. and a little sail. These will cause more scum to rise, which must be taken off immediately; then cover the pot very closely, and place it at a proper distance from the fire, where it will boil very gently and equally, and by no means fast.

By quick and strong boiling, the volatile and finest parts of the ingredients are evaporated, and fly off with the steam, aud the coarser parts are rendered soluble; so you lose the good, and get the bad.

Soups will generally take from three to six hours.

Prepare your broths and soups the evening before you want them. This will give you more time to attend to the rest of your dinner the next day; and when the soup is cold, the fat may be much more easily and completely removed from the surface of it. When you decant it, take care not to disturb the settlings at the bottom of the vessel, which are so fine, that they will escape through a sieve, or even through a tammis, which is the best strainer—the soups appear smoother and finer— and it is much easier cleaned than any sieve. If you strain it while it is hot, pass it through a clean tammis or napkin previously soaked in cold water; the coldness of this will coagu late the fat, and only suffer the pure broth to pass through.

Clear soups must be perfectly transparent, thickened soups about the consistence of rich cream; and remember that thickened soups require nearly double the quantity of seasoning. The piquance of spice, &c. is blunted by the flour and butter; so they are less salubrious, without being more savoury, from the additional quantity of spice, &c. that is smuggled into the stomach.

To thicken and give body to soups and sauces, there are various materials used. Clarified butter is best for this pur

pose; but if you have none ready, put some fresh butter into a stew-pan over a slow clear fire; when it is melted, add fine flour sufficient to make it the thickness of paste; stir it well together with a wooden spoon for fifteen or twenty minutes, till it is quite smooth, and the colour of a guinea: this must be done very gradually and patiently; if you put it over too fierce a fire to hurry it, it will become bitter and empyreumatic; pour it into an earthen pan, and keep it for use. It will keep good a fortnight in summer, and longer in winter. A large spoonful will generally be enough to thicken a quart of gravy. Be particularly attentive in making of it; if it gets any burnt smell or taste, it will spoil every thing it is put into. When cold, it should be thick enough to cut out with a knife, like a solid paste. It is a very essential article in the kitchen, and is the basis of consistency in most made dishes, soups, sauces, and ragouts if the gravies, &c. are too thin, add this thickening, more or less, according to the consistence you would wish them to have. It must be gradually mixed with the soup, till thoroughly incorporated with it; and it should have, at least, half an hour's gentle simmering after: if it is at all lumpy, pass it through a tammis or a fine sieve.

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To their very rich gravies, &c. the French add the white meat of partridges, pigeons, or fowls, pounded to a pulp, and rubbed through a sieve. A piece of beef, which has been boiled to make broth, pounded in the like manner, with a bit of butter and flour, and gradually incorporated with the gravy or soup, will be found a satisfactory substitute for these more expensive articles.

If soup is too thin or too weak, take off the cover of your soup-pot, and let it boil till some of the watery part of it has evaporated; or else, add some of the thickening we have before mentioned; and have at hand some plain browning. This simple preparation is much better than any of the compounds bearing that name, as it colours sauce or soup, without much interfering with its flavour, and is a much better way of colouring them than burning the surface of the meat.

When soups and gravies are kept from day to day, in hot weather, they should be warmed up every day, and put inta fresh scalded tureens, or pans, and placed in a cool cellar; in temperate weather, every other day may be enough.