BEAN SOUP, GREEN.—­Boil a quart of ordinary broad-beans in some stock or water with an onion, carrot and celery.  Remove the skins when the beans are tender and rub the beans through a wire sieve.  Colour the soup with a little spinach extract—­(vegetable colouring, sold in bottles)—­add a little piece of butter, a little powdered sugar, pepper and salt.  The amount of stock or water must depend upon whether it is wished to have the puree thick or thin.  Some purees are made as thick as bread sauce, while some persons prefer them much thinner.  This is purely a matter of taste.

BEAN SOUP FROM FRENCH BEANS.—­This is an admirable method of using up French beans or scarlet runners when they get too old to be boiled as a vegetable in the ordinary way.  Take any quantity of French beans and boil them in some stock or water with an onion, carrot, or celery for about an hour, taking care, at starting, to throw them into boiling water in order to preserve their colour.  It is also a saving of trouble to chop the beans slightly at starting, i.e., take a bunch of beans in the left hand and cut them into pieces, say an eighth of an inch in thickness.  Boil them till they are tender, and then rub the whole through a wire sieve.  Add a little butter, pepper and salt, and colour the soup with spinach extract—­(vegetable colouring, sold in bottles).  Serve toasted or fried bread with the puree, which should be rather thick.

CABBAGE SOUP.—­Take a white cabbage and slice it up, and throw it into some stock or water, with some leeks and slices of turnip.  Boil the whole till the vegetables are tender, flavour with pepper and salt.  This is sometimes called Cornish broth, though in Cornwall a piece of meat or bones are generally boiled with the vegetables.  As no meat, of course, is used, too much water must not be added, but only sufficient liquor must be served to make the vegetables thoroughly moist.  Perhaps the consistency can best be described by saying that there should be equal quantities of vegetables and fluid.

CARROT SOUP.—­If you wish this soup to be of a good colour, you must only use the outside, or red part, of the carrot, in which case a dozen large carrots will be required.  If economy is practised, half this quantity will be sufficient.  Take, say, half a dozen carrots, a small head of celery, and one onion, and throw them into boiling water for a few minutes in order to preserve the colour.  Then drain them off and place them in a saucepan, with a couple of ounces of butter to prevent them sticking and burning, and place the saucepan on a very slack fire and let them stew so that the steam can escape, but take care they don’t burn or get brown.  Now add a quart or two quarts of stock or water and boil them till they are tender.  Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, add a little butter, pounded sugar, pepper, and salt.  The amount of liquid added must entirely depend upon the size of the carrots.