CHAPTER X
Leading Culinary Operations
236— THE PREPARATION OF SOUPS
The nutritious liquids known under the name of Soups are of comparatively recent origin. Indeed, as they are now served, they do not date any further back than the early years of the nineteenth century.
The soups of old cookery were, really, complete dishes, wherein the meats and vegetables used in their preparation were assembled. They, moreover, suffered from the effects of the general confusion which reigned in the menus of those days. These menus seem to have depended in no wise, for their items, upon the progressive satisfaction of the consumers' appetites, and a long procession of dishes was far more characteristic of the meal than their judicious order and diversity.
In this respect, as in so many others, Carême was the reformer, and, if he were not, strictly speaking, the actual initiator of the changes which ushered in our present methods, he certainly had a large share in the establishment of the new theories.
Nevertheless, it took his followers almost a century to bring soups to the perfection of to-day, for modern cookery has replaced those stodgy dishes of yore by comparatively simple and savoury preparations which are veritable wonders of delicacy and taste. Now, my attention has been called to the desirability of drawing up some sort of classification of soups, if only with the view of obviating the absurdity of placing such preparations as are indiscriminately called Bisque, Purée, Cullis, or Cream under the same head. Logically, each preparation should have its own special formula, and it is impossible to admit that one and the same can apply to all.
It is generally admitted that the terms Veloutés and Creams, whose introduction into the vocabulary of cookery is comparatively recent, are peculiarly well suited to supplant those of Bisque and Cullis, which are steadily becoming obsolete, as well as that too vulgar term Purée. Considerations
