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How to make soup

How to make soup

All excellent soups start with lean, juicy beef, mutton, or veal; therefore, it's best to purchase freshly killed parts that offer the finest succulence.

Making a good, rich soup mostly involves balancing the various ingredients so that no one flavor overpowers the others and that the whole composition comes together pleasingly.

To do this, it is important to ensure that the water is the right amount for the amount of meat and other components and that the roots and herbs are thoroughly cleansed. For soups, one pound of meat may typically be cooked in one quart of water, and for gravies, half that amount.

The ideal method for preparing soups or gravies is to gently simmer or stew them.

One may argue that the only way to make a truly excellent soup is in a tightly sealed container; that being said, it's possible that occasionally exposing the soup to air leads to a more healthful result.

Generally speaking, making soups takes three to six hours, and they are best made the day before they are needed. 

The fat may be removed from the soup much more readily and completely when cold. 

It is important to pour the soup off carefully to not disturb the fine settings at the bottom of the vessel, which will pass through a sieve.

The best strainer is a tamis, or cloth soaked in cold water beforehand, especially if the soup needs to be filtered while still hot.

Soups that are thickened should have the consistency of cream, while clear soups should be completely transparent.

Soups and gravies can be thickened and given body by rubbing together potato mucilage, arrowroot, bread shards, isinglass, flour, butter, barley, rice, or oatmeal with a small amount of water.

You'll find that adding some boiling beef that has been roughly chopped, combined with some flour and butter, rubbed through a sieve, and then gradually added to the soup is a great idea.

When the soup seems too weak or thin, remove the boiler's lid and boil the contents until some of the water has evaporated. Alternatively, you can add some of the thickening ingredients listed above.

In hot weather, soups, and gravies should be refrigerated and stored in a cold cellar after being warmed up daily and transferred into new, scalded pans or tureens.

It might be enough to do this every other day in mild weather.

To make soups and gravies, you need a variety of herbs and vegetables. The main ones are rice, beans, vermicelli, macaroni, isinglass, potato mucilage, wheat flour, oatmeal, bread rasps, peace, and pearl and Scotch barley.

onions, garlic, shallots, parsnips, carrots, beetroot, turnips, mushrooms, or mushroom ketchup.

Slicing onions and cooking them in butter and flour until they become brown, then rubbing them through a sieve, is a great way to enhance the flavor and color of brown soups and sauces. It also serves as the foundation for many of the chef's wonderful relishes.

The flavor of an onion will intensify with age and dryness. Cucumber, burnet vinegar, leeks; mashed celery or celery-seed.

Even though it is just as potent, the latter lacks the subtle sweetness of the fresh vegetable; if it is used in place of the former, its flavor needs to be balanced with a small amount of sugar. 

Winter savory, basil, sage, mint, knotted marjoram, lemon thyme, orange thyme, parsley, and cress-seed.

The following ingredients are used to season soups: bay leaves, tomato, chervil, tarragon, burnet, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove, mace, black and white pepper, anchovy essence, lemon peel and juice, and Seville orange juice. The latter adds a more delicate flavor than the lemon, and the acid is much milder.

These ingredients are blended in different amounts with, tomato sauce, mushroom ketchup, Harvey's sauce, and other ingredients to create an almost infinite variety of delicious soups and gravies. Since soups are meant to be the main course of a meal, they most definitely shouldn't be flavored like sauces, which are meant to complement specific dishes.