t it
boil very slowly about a quarter of an hour. When it is going to table,
season with a little salt, and put into it a little crust of French
roll.

_West India Soup, called Pepper Pot._

A small knuckle of veal and a piece of beef of about three pounds, seven
or eight pounds of meat in all; potherbs as for any other soup. When the
soup is skimmed and made, strain it off. The first ingredient you add to
the soup must be some dried ocre (a West India vegetable), the quantity
according to your judgment. It is hard and dry, and therefore requires
a great deal of soaking and boiling. Then put in the spawn of the
lobsters you intend for your soup, first pounding it very fine, and
mixing it by degrees with a little of your soup cooled, or it will be
lumpy, and not so smooth as it should be. Put it into the soup-pot, and
continue to stir some time after it is in. Take about two middling
handfuls of spinach and about six hearts of the inside of very nice
greens; scald both greens and spinach before you put them to the soup,
to take off the rawness; the greens require most scalding. Squeeze them
quite dry, chop and put them into the soup; then add all the fat and
inside egg and spawn you can get from the lobsters, also the meat out of
the tails and claws. Add the green tops only of a large bundle of
asparagus, of the sort which they call sprew-grass, previously scalded;
a few green peas also are very good. After these ingredients are in, the
soup should no more than simmer; and when the herbs are sufficiently
tender it is done enough. This soup is not to be clear, on the contrary
thick with the lobster, and a perfect mash with the lobster and greens.
You are to put in lobster to your liking; I generally put in five or
six, at least of that part of them which is called fat, egg, and inside
spawn, sufficient to make it rich and good. It should look quite yellow
with this. Put plenty of the white part also, and in order that none of
the goodness of the lobsters should be lost, take the shells of those
which you have used, bruise them in a mortar, and boil them in some of
the broth, to extract what goodness remains; then strain off the liquor
and add it to the rest. Scoop some potatoes round, half boiling them
first, and put into it. Season with red pepper. Put in a piece of nice
pickled pork, which must be first scalded, for fear of its being too
salt; stew it with the rest and serve it.

_White Soup._ No. 1.

Take two