If you like a thickened soup, put three table-spoonfuls of the fat you have taken off the soup into a small stew-pan, and mix it with four table-spoonfuls of flour, pour a ladleful of soup to it, and mix it with the rest by degrees, and boil it up till it is smooth.
Cut the meat and gristle of the knuckle and the bacon into mouthfuls, and put them into the soup, and let them get warm.
_Obs._ You may make this more savoury by adding catchup (No. 439), &c. Shin of beef may be dressed in the same way; see Knuckle of Veal stewed with Rice (No. 523).
Take two pounds of scrag of mutton; to take the blood out, put it into a stew-pan, and cover it with cold water; when the water becomes milk-warm, pour it off; then put it in four or five pints of water, with a tea-spoonful of salt, a table-spoonful of best grits, and an onion; set it on a slow fire, and when you have taken all the scum off, put in two or three turnips; let it simmer very slowly for two hours, and strain it through a clean sieve.
This usual method of making mutton broth with the scrag, is by no means the most economical method of obtaining it; for which see Nos. 490 and 564.
_Obs._ You may thicken broth by boiling with it a little oatmeal, rice, Scotch or pearl barley; when you make it for a sick person, read the _Obs._ on Broths, &c. in the last page of the 7th chapter of the Rudiments of Cookery, and No. 564.
_Mock Mutton Broth, without Meat, in five minutes._--(No. 195.)
Boil a few leaves of parsley with two tea-spoonfuls of mushroom catchup, in three-quarters of a pint of very thin gruel[197-*] (No. 572). Season with a little salt.
_Obs._ This is improved by a few drops of eschalot wine (No. 402), and the same of essence of sweet herbs (No. 419). See also Portable Soup (No. 252).
_The Queen's Morning "Bouillon de Santé_,"--(No. 196.)
Sir Kenelm Digby, in his "_Closet of Cookery_," p. 149, London, 1669, informs us, was made with "a brawny hen, or young cock, a handful of parsley, one sprig of thyme, three of spearmint, a little balm, half a great onion, a little pepper and salt, and a clove, with as much water as will cover them; and this boiled to less than a pint for one good porringerful."
Slit them in two, and take away the fat between the claws. The proportion of water to each heel is about a quart: let it simmer gently for eight hours (keeping it clean skimmed); it will make a pint and a half of strong jelly, which is frequently used to make calves' feet jelly (No. 481), or to add to mock turtle and other soups. See No. 240*. This jelly evaporated, as directed in No. 252, will give about three ounces and a half of strong glaze. An unboiled heel costs one shilling and threepence: so this glaze, which is very inferior in flavour to No. 252, is quite as expensive as that is.