4 breakfast-cups lentils, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 2 onions, 4 qts. water, 4 sticks celery, 2 teaspoons herb powder, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 oz. butter. Either the red, Egyptian lentils, or the green German lentils may be used for this soup. If the latter, soak overnight. Stew the lentils very gently in the water for 2 hours, taking off any scum that rises. Well wash the vegetables, slice them, and add to the soup. Stew for 2 hours more. Then rub through a sieve, or not, as preferred. Add the lemon juice, herb powder, and butter (nut or dairy), and serve.
Stew. Choose a small head of celery, not a large, coarse head which will be tough. Well wash and cut into about 8 pieces. (Keep any large coarse sticks, if such are unavoidably present, for soup.) Put in stew-pan and barely cover with water. Simmer until tender. Lift out on to hot dish. Thicken the liquor with a little wholemeal flour, add a small piece of butter pour this sauce over celery, and serve.
1/2 lb. small macaroni, 2 qts. water or vegetable stock, 3/4 lb. onions or 1 lb. tomatoes. Break the macaroni into small pieces and add to the stock when nearly boiling. Cook with the lid off the saucepan until the macaroni is swollen and very tender. (This will take about an hour.) If onions are used for flavouring, steam separately until tender, and add to soup just before serving. If tomatoes are used, skin and cook slowly to pulp (without water) before adding. If the vegetable stock is already strong and well-flavoured, no addition of any kind will be needed.
1/4 pint pearl barley, 1/4 pint red lentils, 2 qts. cold bran water, flavouring. To make the bran water, boil 1 measure of bran with 4 measures of water for not less than 30 minutes. Simmer together the barley, lentils, and bran water for 3 hours. To flavour, put 4 ozs. butter or 3 ozs. nutter into a pan with 1 lb. sliced onions. Shake over fire until brown, but do not let them burn or the flavour of the soup will be spoilt. Add these to the stock at the end of the first hour. Any other vegetable liked may be chopped to dice and added. Tomato may be substituted for the onion if preferred and no fat used. Strain through a hair sieve, and serve the clear liquid after boiling up.
1 qt. water or white stock, 1 lb. tomatoes. Slice the tomatoes, and simmer very gently in the water until tender. Rub through a sieve. Boil up and serve.
It is very much to be regretted that haricot beans are not more used in this country. There are hundreds of thousands of families who at the end of a year would be richer in purse and more healthy in body if they would consent to deviate from the beaten track and try haricot beaus, not as an accompaniment to a dish of meat, but as an article of diet in themselves. The immense benefit derived in innumerable cases from a diet of beans is one of the strongest and most practical arguments in favour of vegetarianism. Meat-eaters often boast of the plainness of their food, and yet wonder that they suffer in health. It is not an uncommon thing for a man to consult his doctor and to tell him, "I live very simply, nothing but plain roast or boiled." Medical men are all agreed on one point, and that is that haricot beans rank almost first among vegetables as a nourishing article of diet. In writing on this subject, Sir Henry Thompson observes, "Let me recall, at the close of these few hints about the haricot, the fact that there is no product of the vegetable kingdom so nutritious, holding its own, in this respect, as it well can, even against the beef and mutton of the animal kingdom." This is a very strong statement, coming as it does from so high an authority, and vegetarians would do well to hear it in mind when discussing the subject of vegetarianism with those who differ from them. Sir Henry proceeds as follows:--"The haricot ranks just above lentils, which have been so much praised of late, and rightly, the haricot being to most palates more agreeable. By most stomachs, too, haricots are more easily digested than meat is; and, consuming weight for weight, the eater feels lighter and less oppressed, as a rule, after the leguminous dish, while the comparative cost is very greatly in favour of the latter." To boil haricot beans proceed as follows. We refer, of course, to the dried white haricot beans, the best of which are those known as Soissons. The beans should be soaked in cold water overnight, and in the morning any that may be found floating on the top of the water should be thrown away. Suppose the quantity be a quart; place these in a saucepan with two quarts of cold water, slightly salted. As soon as time water conies to the boil, move it so that the beans will only simmer gently; they must then continue simmering till they are tender. This generally takes about three hours, and if the water is hard, it is advisable to put in a tiny piece of soda. This is the simple way of cooking beans usually recommended in cookery-books when they are served up with a dish of meat, such as a leg of mutton a la Bretonne, where the beans are served in some rich brown gravy containing fat. In vegetarian cookery, of course, we must proceed entirely differently, and there are various ways in which this nourishing dish can be served, as savoury and as appetising, and indeed more so, than if we had assistance from the slaughter-house. We will now proceed to give a few instances. In the first place, it will greatly assist the flavour of the beans if we boil with them one or two onions and a dessertspoonful of savoury herbs. Supposing, however, we have them boiled plain. Take a large dry crust of bread and rub the outside well over with one or two beads of garlic. Place this crust of bread with the beans after they have been strained off, and toss them lightly about with the crust without breaking the beans. Remove the crust and moisten the beans while hot with a lump of butter, add a brimming dessertspoonful of chopped blanched parsley; squeeze the juice of a lemon over the whole, and serve. Instead of butter we can add, as they always do in Italy, two or three tablespoonfuls of pure olive oil. Those who have conquered the unreasonable English prejudice against the use of oil will probably find this superior to butter. If the beans are served in the form of a puree, it is always best to boil a few onions with them and rub the onions through the wire sieve with the beans, taking care that the quantity of onion is not so large that it destroys and overpowers the delicate and delicious flavour of the beans themselves. Next, we would call attention to the importance of not throwing away the water in which the beans were boiled. This water contains far more nourishment than people are aware of, and throughout the length and breadth of France, where economy is far more understood than in this country, it is invariably saved to assist in making some kind of soup, and as our soup will, of course, be vegetarian, the advantage gained is simply incalculable.
2 heaped breakfast-cups beans, 2 qts. water, 3 tablespoons chopped parsley or 1/2 lb. tomatoes, nut or dairy butter size of walnut, 1 tablespoon lemon juice. For this soup use the small white or brown haricots. Soak overnight in 1 qt. of the water. In the morning add the rest of the water, and boil until soft. It may then be rubbed through a sieve, but this is not imperative. Add the chopped parsley, the lemon juice, and the butter. Boil up and serve. If tomato pulp is preferred for flavouring instead of parsley, skin the tomatoes and cook slowly to pulp (without water) before adding.
1 head celery, 4 large tomatoes, 4 qts. water, 4 large English onions, 3 tablespoons coarsely chopped parsley. This soup figures often in the diet sheet of the Physical Regenerationists for gouty and rheumatic patients, but in addition to being a valuable medicine on account of its salts, it is the most delicious clear soup that I know of. To make: chop the ingredients to dice, cover closely, and simmer until the quantity of liquid is reduced to one half.
6 ozs. sago, 2 qts. stock, juice of 1 lemon. Wash the sago and soak it for 1 hour. Put it in a saucepan with the lemon juice and stock, and stew for 1 hour.
1 lb. chestnuts, 1-1/2 oz. nutter or butter, 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon wholemeal flour, 1-1/2 pints water. First put on the chestnuts (without shelling or pricking) in cold water, and boil for an hour. Then remove shells and put the nuts in an enamelled saucepan with the fat. Fry for 10 minutes. Add the flour gradually, stirring all the time, then add the water. Cook gently for half an hour. Lastly, add the parsley, boil up, and serve. It is rather nicer if the flour is omitted, the necessary thickness being obtained by rubbing the soup through a sieve before adding the parsley. Those who do not object to milk may use 1 pint milk and 1 pint water in place of the 1-1/2 pints water.
