1/2 lb. of lentils, 1 finely chopped onion, 1 breakfastcupful of breadcrumbs, 1 breakfastcupful of tinned tomatoes, 1-1/2 oz. of butter, 2 eggs, pepper and salt to taste, some raspings, butter, vege-butter or oil for frying. Pick and wash the lentils, and boil them in enough water to cover them; when this is absorbed add the tomatoes, and if necessary gradually a little more water to prevent the lentils from burning. Fry the onion in 1-1/2 oz. of butter, mix it with the lentils as they are stewing, and add pepper and salt to taste. When the lentils are quite soft, and like a pureé (which will take from 1 to 1-1/2 hours), set them aside to cool. Mix the lentils and the breadcrumbs, beat up one of the eggs and add it to the mixture, beating all well together. If it is too dry, add a very little milk, but only just enough to make the mixture keep together. Form into rissoles, beat up the second egg, roll them into the egg and raspings, and fry the rissoles a nice brown in boiling butter or oil. Drain and serve.
1 breakfastcupful of rice, 1 ditto of Egyptian lentils, 1 lb. of tomatoes, 1 dessertspoonful of curry, 2 eggs well beaten, 1 oz. of butter, salt to taste. Boil the rice and lentils together until quite tender, and let them cool a little. Slice the tomatoes into a pie-dish, mix the curry, eggs, and salt with the rice and lentils, add a little milk it necessary; spread the mixture over the tomatoes, with the butter in bits over the top, and bake the savoury from 1/2 to 1 hour.
Put a quart of red haricot beans into soak overnight, and put a little piece of soda in the water to soften it. The next morning put the beans on to boil in three quarts of water, with some carrot, celery and onion, or the beans can be boiled in some stock made from these vegetables. After the beans are tender, pound them in a mortar, and then rub the whole through a wire sieve, after first removing the carrot, celery and onion. Add a teaspoonful of pounded sugar and about two ounces of butter. Fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup. If the soup is liked thin, of course more water can be added.
Take a white cabbage and slice it up, and throw it into some stock or water, with some leeks and slices of turnip. Boil the whole till the vegetables are tender, flavour with pepper and salt. This is sometimes called Cornish broth, though in Cornwall a piece of meat or bones are generally boiled with the vegetables. As no meat, of course, is used, too much water must not be added, but only sufficient liquor must be served to make the vegetables thoroughly moist. Perhaps the consistency can best be described by saying that there should be equal quantities of vegetables and fluid.
Break open a good-sized cocoanut and grate sufficient of the white part till it weighs half a pound. Boil this in some stock, and after it has boiled for about an hour strain it off. Only a small quantity of stock must be used, and the cocoanut should be pressed and squeezed, so as to extract all the goodness. Add a little pepper and salt, and about half a grated nutmeg. Next boil separately three pints of milk, and add this to the strained soup. Thicken the soup with some ground rice, and serve. Of course, a little cream would be a great improvement. Serve with toasted or fried bread.
1 or 2 heads of celery, a teacupful of dried and sifted Allinson breadcrumbs, 2 eggs, pepper and salt to taste. Well wash the celery, remove the coarse outer stalks, and steam the parts used until they are a little tender. Then cut them into pieces about 2 inches long, dip them first into the egg whipped up, then into the breadcrumbs, and fry them in boiling butter, vege-butter, or olive oil until a nice brown; dust with pepper and salt, and serve up very hot; eat with white or tomato sauce.
Light-coloured and dry cheese is necessary for this somewhat peculiar soup, but the best cheese of all is, undoubtedly, Gruyere. Grate half a pound of cheese and spread a layer of this at the bottom of the soup-tureen. Cover this layer of cheese with some very thin slices of stale crumb of bread. Then put another layer of cheese and another layer of bread till all the cheese is used up. Next take about two tablespoonfuls of brown roux, melt this in a small saucepan, and add two tablespoonfuls of chopped onion. Let the onion cook in the melted roux over the fire, and then add a quart of water, and stir it all up till it boils, adding pepper and salt and a few drops of Parisian essence (burnt sugar) to give it a dark brown colour. Now pour the boiling soup over the contents of the soup-tureen, and let it stand a few minutes so that the bread has time to soak, and serve.
Prepare half a dozen parsnips, and boil them with an onion and half a head of celery in some stock till they are quite tender. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, boil it up again, and serve. Sufficient parsnips must be boiled to make the soup as thick as pea soup, so the quantity of stock must be regulated accordingly. This soup is generally rather sweet, owing to the parsnips, and an extra quantity of salt must be added in consequence, as well as pepper. In Belgium and Germany this sweetness is corrected by the addition of vinegar. This, of course, is a matter of taste.
1/2 lb. of mushrooms, 1 oz. of butter, 1 small English onion, 1 tablespoonful of vermicelli broken up small, pepper and salt to taste. Peel and wash the mushrooms and cut them up; chop up the onions very fine, melt the butter in the frying-pan and fry the mushrooms and onion in it, adding pepper and salt to taste; a good deal of liquid will run from the mushrooms, stir into it the vermicelli, which let cook in the juice until tender; let the mixture cool, line some tartlet tins with Allinson wholemeal crust, fill with the mixture, cover with crust, and press the edges well together; bake in a moderate oven.
2 lbs. of artichokes, 1-1/2 lbs. of tomatoes (or three parts of a tin of tomatoes), 1 oz. of Allinson fine wholemeal, 1 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste, 1/2 dozen eschalots. Parboil the artichokes, drain them, and cut them into slices. Make tomato sauce as follows: Chop the eschalots up very finely, slice the tomatoes and stew both in 3/4 pint of water for 20 minutes, adding seasoning and the butter; thicken the sauce with the wheatmeal, rub through a sieve, pour it over the artichokes and stew both gently until the artichokes are quite tender; serve with potatoes.
