=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