Acton - The elegant economist

Beef Mutton Veal Hams Salted Pork Fat Bacon Pigs Ears and Feet Venison Black and Moor Game Partridges Pheasants Wild Pigeons Hares Rabbits Turkeys Fowls Tame Pigeons Sturgeon Conger Eel, with all sorts of Fishusually eaten All Shell-Fish Every kind of Vegetable and Herb fit for food Butter Milk Eggs Sago Arrowroot Indian Corn Hominy Soujee Tapioca Pearl Barley Oatmeal Polenta Macaroni Vermicelli Semoulina, and otherItalian Pastes.

The art of preparing good, wholesome, palatable soups, without great expense, which is so well understood in France, and in other countries where they form part of the daily food of all classes of thepeople, has hitherto been very much neglected in England; yet it really presents no difficulties which a little practice,and the most common degree of care, will not readily overcome; and we strongly recommend increased attention to it, not onlyon account of the loss and inconvenience which ignorance of it occasions in many households, but because a better knowledgeof it will lead naturally to improvement in other branches of cookery connected with it in which our want of skill is now equally apparent.

We have endeavoured to show by the list at the beginning of this chapter the immense number of different articles of whichsoup may be in turn compounded. It is almost superfluous to add, that it may be rendered at pleasure exceedingly rich, orsimple in the extreme; composed, in fact, of all that is most choice in diet, or of little beyond herbs and vegetables.

From the varied produce of a well-stored kitchen garden, it may be made excellent at a very trifling cost; and where fishis fresh and abundant it may be cheaply supplied nearly equal in quality to that for which a full proportion of meat is commonlyused.

It is best suited to the colder seasons of the year when thickened well with rice, semoulina, pearl barley, or other ingredientsof the same nature; and adapted to the summer months when lighter and more refreshing. Families who have resided much abroad,and those accustomed to continental modes of service, prefer it usually in any form to the more solid and heavy dishes which still often supersede it altogether at our tables (except at those of the more affluentclasses of society, where it appears, as a matter of course, in the daily bills of fare), and which are so oppressive, not only to foreigners, but to all persons generally to whom circumstances have rendered them unaccustomed diet; and manya housekeeper who is compelled by a narrow income to adopt a system of rigid domestic economy, would find it assists greatlyin furnishing comfortable meals in a very frugal manner, if the proper modes of making it were fully comprehended as they ought to be.