Made then with one proportion of pearl barley
and one of peas to four of potatoes, bread, salt,
vinegar, and water as before, the cost of each
portion of soup was reduced to a farthing; or,
strictly, the cost was forty-one farthings for
forty dinners. The same soup in London would
now cost, perhaps, a halfpenny a pint. A morsel
of strong well-flavoured cheese grated and
sprinkled over this soup adds to its relish. If
any meat, or salt fish, or other such flavouring
matter be added, it should be cut, after boiling,
into pieces as small even as barleycorns, for the
diffusion of its flavour, and all boiling should be
very gentle, and all coppers would be the better
for having double bottoms. In the Munich
kitchen it was found that six hundred pints of
soup could be made with only forty-four pounds
of pine wood, for the philosopher attended not
more carefully to the economy of food than to
the economy of fuel, of which commonly
one-half is wasted that is burnt in every kitchen.
For the cheapest soup he can suggest, Count
Rumford's receipt is, "Take of water eight
gallons, and, mixing it with five pounds of
barley-meal, boil it to the consistency of a
thick jelly. Season it with salt, pepper, vinegar,
sweet herbs, and four red herrings
pounded in a mortar. Instead of bread, add
five pounds of Indian corn made into samp,
stir together with a ladle, and serve up in
portions of twenty ounces." Samp is Indian corn
deprived of its husks by ten or twelve hours'
soaking in water and wood-ashes, the kernels
being afterwards simmered for a couple of days,
until they swell to a great size and burst. The
proper cost of a portion of this soup and samp
would be something less than the third of a
penny, if the Indian corn were obtained at its
fair price of five farthings a pound.

There was lately left with us "for
conscientious consideration," together with a
newspaper cutting in evidence that death by starvation
is no unknown horror amidst the wealth
of London, a small packet of greasy powder,
labelled "Count Rumford's Soup improved."
The benevolent idea was, that in all impoverished
districts there should be sold such packets
professing to give the substance of a pint of good
soup for a halfpenny. We conscientiously
followed the directions, which were simply to boil
for three minutes in a pint of water over a
moderate fire. The result was a thin brown
liquid, by no means palatable. We boiled on for
twenty minutes, stirring most assiduously, for the
powder had a suspicious resemblance to a
halfpenny-worth of groats seasoned with a dash of
meat grease, and a sprinkling of caraway-seeds.
But the soup, though improved by more boiling,
did not thicken, and although one might
conceive it welcome to one perishing from hunger,
starvation must, we thought, have set in very
decidedly before any one could be persuaded to gulp
down a pint of it. The dry groats of which gruel is
made, or Indian meal, might, of course, cunningly
mixed with pea-powder, burnt onion, dried celery,
a pinch of dried and pounded herring, or other
cheap flavourings, be sold in halfpenny packets,
which would make a pint of thin but wholesome
brown soup-flavoured gruel, and the honest
manufacture and sale of such soup-powders
would, as our correspondent rightly feels, be of
unquestionable advantage to the very poor.

But it is hard to say who should despair of
food who can compass the three requisites for
soup-making—fire, water, and an iron pot. In
this noble form of soup, cookery seems actually
to create food. The waste bread and scrapings
of the rolling-pin and pasteboard, the refuse
cabbage leaves and stalks, and turnip-parings,
pea-shells, and discarded outside bits of
celery, the rind of bacon, fish-bones, and the
meat-bones of London, would, rightly economised in
every house, feed a small army of poor. There
should be no kitchen without its pot-au-feu
constantly simmering, into which is cast, not
without strict regard to cleanliness, every
rejected scrap that contains nourishment, and out
of which can be drawn daily liquor of life, which
a slight touch of the cook's skill makes into
palatable soup either for the household itself, or
for the poorer households that are brought
into a right social relation with its inmates.
In the Crimea, before English soldiers knew
how to turn their food to account, every knot
of French privates had its pot-au-feu, or black
pot, into which the men clubbed to throw
their inferior rations with what few vegetables
they could get, and even sorrel and nettles
gathered on the spot; thus getting quarts of
good soup and savoury stews out of the most
unpromising materials. When poor Soyer,
who taught some of this lesson to us in the
Crimea, and well understood, with all his
pleasant vanities, the highest social function
of a cook, went to instruct the Irish, he found
very unwilling pupils. They said, "It's making
pigs of us he is, to tell us to stew offal and
scrapings." And yet, how nourishing and
palatable is the food thus scorned.

Look at the sturdy Norman peasant who is
half built out of cabbage soup. You see in his
poor cottage the clean brass soup-pan filled with
fresh water from the spring, and kept under a
close wicker cover that looks like a flat beehive.
A string from the cover passes through a pulley
on the ceiling, and the other end hangs ready to
the hand of the housewife when she shreds her
cabbage-leaves and other vegetables. By a pull
at the string she lifts the cover as she tosses the
cut leaves into her pan, then dropping it
immediately, to keep the flies and dust out of the
food. The bright soup-pan remains under the
basket until it is placed over the fire, and when
the soup is made, it is replaced under the same
cover until the soup is served on the table. In
no duke's kitchen is there a nicer sense of
cleanliness. Now, many a strong fellow eats nothing
but this soup and bread. After the cabbage
has been boiled some time, there are added a few
bits of bread and onion fried in butter or fat.
Or, the good Norman housewife begins with the
grease and onions, adds the cabbage and water,
boils for a long time, and throws in the bread
just before serving.