Soups may be canned with or without meat.  We make one variety which is a pure vegetable soup.  We use no stock or meat, and can it in its own juice or liquor, thus using no water.

When we wish to use it we dilute it three or four times and serve it as a vegetable soup or, more frequently, when we have chicken bones or any meat bones on hand, we add a can of this concentrated vegetable mixture to the bones and make a delicious stock soup.

I will give this recipe as I have given it to many friends, all of whom have pronounced it excellent: 

1 Peck ripe tomatoes 1 Head cabbage 1 Dozen carrots 1 White turnip 3 Pounds string beans 1 Pound okra 3 Red peppers 1 Peck spinach 2 Pounds asparagus 6 Small beets 6 Ears sweet corn

Scald the tomatoes by placing them in a wire basket and plunging them into boiling water for one and a half minutes.  Cold-dip them immediately.  After removing the core and stem end of the tomato, the skin slips right off.  Save all the tomato juice.  Cut the tomatoes into quarters.  Put into a large pail or bucket with the juice.  Blanch the cabbage, carrots, turnip, string beans, okra and sweet red peppers five minutes.  Cold-dip.  Of course you blanch and cold-dip each product separately.  Cut each vegetable after it is blanched and cold-dipped into small cubes and add to the tomatoes.

Spinach must be carefully washed to remove all grit and sand.  All greens must be washed through several waters to cleanse them thoroughly.

Instead of blanching the spinach in a kettle of boiling water, as we do the other vegetables, we steam it by placing it in a colander over boiling water or in a regulation steamer with tightly fitting cover, such as is used for steaming suet puddings and brown bread.  If you can with a steam-pressure canner or a pressure cooker, then steam the spinach there.  If we boiled the spinach for fifteen or twenty minutes we would lose a quantity of the mineral salts, the very thing we aim to get into our systems when we eat spinach, dandelion greens, Swiss chard and other greens.  After the blanching or steaming comes the cold dip.

There is something about blanching asparagus, either for soups or when canned alone, that is worth knowing.  Instead of blanching the whole stalk of asparagus for the same length of time, we use a little discretion, giving the tougher, harder ends a full four minutes’ blanching, but allowing the tender tip ends only two minutes.  You are possibly wondering how that is done.

Tie the asparagus stalks in bunches and put the bunches with all the tips standing one way on a piece of cheesecloth.  Tie the cloth or snap rubber bands round it, and then stand the asparagus in boiling water in an upright position for two minutes; next lay the asparagus lengthwise in the blanching water for another two minutes, and you have accomplished your purpose.  You have given the tougher parts two minutes’ more blanching than the tender parts.  Use a deep enough kettle so the asparagus will be completely covered when laid lengthwise.  After the blanching, cold-dip the asparagus.