Clear soup

Ingredients: Stock meat, water, a bunch of herbs (thyme, parsley, chervil, bay leaf, basil, marjoram), three carrots, three turnips, three onions, three cloves stuck in the onions, one blade of mace.

Cut up three pounds of stock meat small and put it in a stock pot with two quarts of cold water, three carrots, and three turnips cut up, three onions with a clove stuck in each one, a bunch of herbs and a blade of mace. Let it come to the boil and then draw it off, at once skim off all the scum, and keep it gently simmering, and occasionally add two or three tablespoonsful of cold water. Let it simmer all day, and then strain it through a fine cloth.

Some of the liquor in which a calf's head has been cooked, or even a calf's foot, will greatly improve a clear soup.

The stock should never be allowed to boil as long as the meat and vegetables are in the stock pot.

Source: ''The Cook's Decameron: A Study In Taste, Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes'' from a project that puts out-of-copyright texts into the public domain. This is from a *very* old source, and reflects the cooking at the turn of the last century. Update as necessary.