Vegetable Marrow Soup.—Take a large vegetable marrow, peel it, cut it open, remove all the pips, and place it in a stew-pan with about two ounces of fresh butter. Add a brimming teaspoonful of powdered sugar, a little grated nutmeg, and pepper and salt. Keep turning the pieces of vegetable marrow over in the butter, taking care that they do not at all turn colour. After frying these pieces gently for five or ten minutes, add some boiling milk, and let the whole simmer gently till it can be rubbed through a wire sieve. Care must be taken not to get this soup too thin, as the vegetable marrow itself contains a large quantity of water. Season with pepper and salt, and serve fried or toasted bread with the soup.

Vegetable Soup.—(See JARDINIÈRE SOUP.)

Vermicelli Soup.—Take a quarter of a pound of vermicelli and break it up into small pieces, throw it into boiling water, and let it boil for five minutes to get rid of the dirt and floury taste, then throw it immediately into about a quart of clear soup. The vermicelli must be taken from the boiling water and thrown into the boiling soup at once. If you were to boil the vermicelli, strain it off, and put it by to add to the soup, you would find it would stick together in one lump and be spoilt.

Vermicelli Soup, White.—The vermicelli must be thrown into white soup instead of clear soup. (See WHITE SOUP.)

White Soup.—Just as in ordinary white soup the secret of success is to have some strongly reduced stock, so in vegetarian white soup it is essential that we should have a small quantity of liquid strongly impregnated with the flavour of vegetables. For this purpose, place an onion, the white part of a head of celery, and a slice of turnip in a stew-pan with a little butter, and fry them till they are tender without becoming brown. Now add sufficient water to enable you to boil them, and let the water boil away till very little is left. Now rub this through a wire sieve and add it to a quart of milk in which a couple of bay-leaves have been boiled. Thicken the soup with a little white roux, add a suspicion of nutmeg, and also, if possible, a little cream. Flavour with pepper and salt. Serve fried or toasted bread with the soup.

CHAPTER II

SAUCES