or cabbages; while at the same
time a quart of soup with a slice of bread, would be a very hearty meal.
In no other way could meat drippings be applied to so good a purpose, as
in the manufacture of a gallon of soup, sufficient to give a dinner to a
whole family. The quantity of fat or drippings necessary for the soup is
so small, that it may easily be spared from a joint of roast meat, while
enough will remain for other purposes. When mutton dripping is made into
soup, wheat flour is better than oatmeal; but the mucilage of potatoe is
better still, requiring only one ounce to the gallon. When pork is
roasted, peas should be used in preference to boiled barley, and the
soup will be very superior in flavour to any that is made with the bones
of meat, or combined with bacon. Fat pork is eaten daily in large
quantities, in most of the counties of England; and in some parts, hog's
lard is spread on bread instead of butter, besides the abundance of lard
that is used by all ranks of people, in puddings, cakes, and pasties.
Fat enters so much into the composition of our diet, that we could
scarcely subsist without it; and the application of it to soups is only
a different mode of using it, and certainly more frugal and economical
than any other. It may readily be perceived how soups made from lean
meat might be improved by the addition of a little fat, mixed up and
incorporated with a mucilage of potatoes, of wheat flour, oatmeal, peas,
and barley. But where a quantity of fat swims on the surface of the
broth, made from a fat joint of meat, and it cannot from its
superabundance be united with the liquid, by means of any mucilage, it
had better be skimmed off, and preserved for future use; otherwise the
soup will not be agreeable, for it is the due proportion of animal and
vegetable substance that makes soup pleasant and wholesome. To make good
soup of a leg of beef or an ox cheek, which is generally called stew, a
pretty large quantity of the vegetable class ought to be added; and none
seems better adapted than Scotch barley, by which double and treble the
quantity of soup may be made from the same given weight of meat. One
pint of well prepared leg of beef, or ox cheek soup, together with the
fat, will make a gallon of good soup at the trifling expense of
four-pence. In the same way soups may be made from the stew of beef,
mutton, veal, or pork, choosing those parts where mucilage, jelly, and
fat abound. Bacon is allowed to be