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Classic
Cook Books
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page 291
If the things are ready to put in the boiler as soon as the meat is served, it
will save lighting fire, and second cooking.
Take turnips, carrots, leeks, potatoes, the outer leaves of lettuce, celery, or
any sort of vegetable that is at hand; cut them small, and throw in with the
thick part of peas, after they have been pulped for soup, and grits, or coarse
oatmeal, which have been used for gruel.
Should the soup be poor of meat, the long boiling of the hones, and different
vegetables, will afford better nourishment than the laborious poor can obtain;
especially as they are rarely tolerable cooks, and have not fuel to do justice
to what they buy. But in every family there is some superfluity; and if it be
prepared with cleanliness and care, the benefit will be very great to the
receiver, and the satisfaction no less to the giver.
I found, in the time of scarcity, ten or fifteen gallons of soup could be dealt
out weekly, at an expense not worth mentioning, though the vegetables were
bought. If in the villages about London, abounding with opulent families, the
quantity of ten gallons were made in ten gentlemen's houses, there would be a
hundred gallons of wholesome agreeable food given weekly for the supply of forty
poor families, at the rate of two gallons and a half each.
What a relief to the labouring husband, instead of bread and cheese, to have a
warm comfortable meal! To the sick, aged, and infant branches, how important an
advantage! nor less to the industrious mother, whose forbearance from the
necessary quantity of food, that others may have a larger share, frequently
reduces that strength upon which the welfare of her family essentially depends.
It very rarely happens that servants object to seconding the kindness of their
superiors to the poor; but should the cook in any family think the adoption of
this plan too troublesome, a gratuity at the end of the winter might repay her,
if the love of her fellow-creatures failed of doing it a hundred fold. Did she
readily enter into
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