PEA SOUP, FROM DRIED GREEN PEAS.—­Proceed as in the above recipe in every respect, substituting dried green peas for ordinary yellow split peas.  Colour the soup green by adding a large handful of spinach before it is rubbed through the wire sieve, or add a small quantity of spinach extract (vegetable colouring sold by grocers in bottles); dried mint and fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup, as with the other.

PEA SOUP, GREEN (FRESH).—­Take half a peck of young peas, shell them, and throw the peas into cold water.  Put all the shells into a quart or more of stock or water.  Put in also a handful of spinach if possible, a few sprigs of parsley, a dozen fresh mint-leaves and half a dozen small, fresh, green onions.  Boil these for an hour, or rather more, and then rub the whole through a wire sieve.  You cannot rub all the shells through; but you will be able to rub a great part through, that which is left in the sieve being only strings.  Now put on the soup to boil again, and as soon as it boils throw in the peas; as soon as these are tender—­about twenty minutes—­the soup is finished and can be sent to table.  If the soup is thin, a little white roux can be added to thicken it; if of a bad colour, or if you could not get any spinach, add some spinach extract (vegetable colouring, sold by all grocers), only take care not to add too much, and make the soup look like green paint.

POTATO SOUP.—­Potato soup is a very good method of using up the remains of cold boiled potatoes.  Slice up a large onion and fry it, without letting it turn colour, with a little butter.  Add a little water or stock to the frying-pan, and let the onion boil till it is tender.  Boil a quart or more of milk separately with a couple of bay-leaves; rub the onion with the cold potatoes through a wire sieve and add it to the milk.  You can moisten the potatoes in the sieve with the milk.  When you have rubbed enough to make the soup thick enough, let it boil up and add to every quart a saltspoonful of thyme and a brimming teaspoonful of chopped blanched parsley.  This soup should be rather thicker than most thick soups.

When new potatoes first come into season, and especially when you have new potatoes from your own garden, it will often be found that mixed with the ordinary ones there are many potatoes no bigger than a toy marble, and which are too small to be boiled and sent to table as an ordinary dish of new potatoes.  Reserve all these little dwarf potatoes, wash them, and throw them for five or ten minutes into boiling water, drain them off and throw them into the potato soup whole.  Of course they must boil in the soup till they are tender.  A little cream is a great improvement to the soup, and dried mint can be served with it, but is not absolutely necessary.