The Chicago Star

Features

A broth-wise cook can
give soup taste appeal

By JO LYNNE

Too many cooks spoil the broth but at our house we think you
can't have enough broths to make a soup.

We don't have that mysterious
out of which a good French cook
pours one masterpiece after the
other into the soup bowl but we
have our own version a plain
ordinary mason jar which sits in
the refrigerator. Every smidgin
of vegetable water and every dab
of leftover gravy or vegetable go
into the jar.

This liquid treasure is used in
part or whole for the water called
for in the various dehydrated
soups on the market. More economical than the canned soups,
the packaged soups can be
stretched to feed a family nutri-
tiously-and they also taste different this way each time.

OTHER times we go in for
canned soup marriages. We make
puree mongol out of canned tomato soup and canned pea soup
and sometimes we vary that with
creamed versions of either or both.
We mix tomato soup with vege-
table soup, corn chowder, bean
and bacon, or clam chowder.
Tuna fish or leftover chicken in
a mushroom soup sauce is an old
standby, but did you ever try un-
diluted clam chowder or cream
of spinach soup as a sauce for fish
filets?

ONCE OUR soup is made, we
like to see what the pantry shelf
has to offer in the way of garnishes. We use oysterettes, midget
pretzels and cheese tidbits if
we have them. We have put a
slice of dill pickle in soup and
lemon is almost a must in con-
somme.

Croutons are an old way of us-
ing up dried bread. Onion soup
isn't worthy of the name without
a toasted chunk of bread or roll
in it, and a spoonful of sour cream,
dusted with paprika, makes any
soup look special even if it is
only a second out of the can.

Leftover egg yolk can be riced
into any soup, and consomme can
go Chinese with a raw egg stirred
in as it boils. All in all, being in
the soup can be fun.