The Belgian Cookbook | Page 4

they are tender, rub them
through the sieve and serve it very hot.
[G. Goffaux.]
FLEMISH SOUP
To two pounds of washed and picked Brussels sprouts add ten potatoes,
two onions, two leeks, salt, pepper. Cook all gently and pass through a
sieve. Add at the last moment a sprinkle of chopped chervil.
[G. Goffaux.]
TOMATO PURÉE
Begin by cleaning four potatoes, two leeks, a celery, four carrots, three
pounds of big tomatoes; well wash all these vegetables and cut them in
dice, the tomatoes a little larger. Cook them all gently for an hour in
nearly two pints of gravy, to which you have already added two thick
slices of bread and a pinch of salt. Take care that your vegetables do
not stick to the bottom of the pan. When all is well cooked, pass it
through a fine tammy. Add more gravy, or water and meat juice; make
it of the consistency that you wish. Bring it to the boil again over the

fire, adding pepper and salt, and just before serving a bit of fresh butter
also. It is a great improvement to add at the last minute the yolk of an
egg, mixed in a little cold water, quickly stirred in when the soup is off
the fire.
The three recipes for seven or eight persons.
[G. Kerckaert.]
ONION SOUP
Mince some thick onions, five or six, and let them color over the fire in
butter. Add a dessert-spoonful of flour, sprinkling it in, and the same
amount in gravy; thicken it with potatoes and when these are cooked,
peas, all through a sieve. Bring the purée to the right consistency with
milk, and let it simmer for a few minutes before serving, adding pepper
and salt.
[Gabrielle Janssens.]
POTAGE LEMAN
Make a good gravy with one and one-half pounds of skirt of beef. With
one half of the gravy make a very good purée of peas--if possible the
green peas--with the other half make a good purée of tomatoes.
Combine the two purées, adding pepper and salt and a dust of cayenne.
For each guest add to the soup a teaspoonful of Madeira wine, beat it
all well and serve quickly. Or add, instead of Madeira, one
dessert-spoonful of sherry wine.
This celebrated soup is honored by the name of the glorious defender of
Namur.
[Gabrielle Janssens.]
TOMATO SOUP
Boil together six medium potatoes, a celery, two leeks, two carrots, and
a pound of fresh tomatoes, with pepper, salt and a leaf of bay. Pass all

through the sieve. Fry two or three chopped onions in some butter and
add the soup to them. Boil up again for twenty minutes before serving.
If you have no fresh tomatoes, the tinned ones can be used, removing
the skin, at the same time that you add the fried onions.
[Mme. van Praet.]
SOUP, CREAM OF ASPARAGUS
Boil some potatoes and pass them through the sieve, add the
asparagustops, with a pat of butter for each four tops; thin the soup with
extract of meat and water, and at the last moment stir in the raw yolks
of two eggs, and a little chopped parsley.
[Mme. van Praet.]
GREEN PEA SOUP
Put half a pound of dry green peas to soak overnight in water, with a
teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda in it. In the morning take out the
peas and put them on the fire in about three-and-a-half pints of water.
When the peas are nearly cooked, add five big potatoes. When all is
cooked enough for the skins to come off easily, rub all through a sieve.
Fry in some butter four or five onions and five or six leeks till they are
brown, or, failing butter, use some fat of beef; add these to the peas and
boil together a good half-hour. If possible, add a pig's trotter cut into
four, which makes the soup most excellent. When ready to serve,
remove the four pieces of trotter. Little dice of fried bread should be
handed with the soup.
[V. Verachtert.]
VEGETABLE SOUP
Fry four onions till they are brown. Add them to three pints of water,
with four carrots, a slice of white crumb of bread, five potatoes, a
celery and a bunch of parsley, which you must take out before passing
the soup through the sieve. A few tomatoes make the soup better; if

they are tinned, do not add them till after the soup has been passed
through the tammy; if they are fresh, put them in with the other
vegetables. Simmer for an hour, add pepper and salt before serving.
[V. Verachtert.]
MUSHROOM CREAM SOUP
On a good white stock foundation, for which you have used milk and a
bone of veal, sprinkle in some ground rice till it thickens, stirring it
well for