Preparations for the Sick
Chicken Broth
Skin and cut up a fine full-grown fowl. If but little is wanted, take only the dark meat for the broth, and put it into a pot with a small quart of water, and slowly boil it to rags. Strain the liquid and return it to the pot, and thicken it with two spoonfuls of arrow root, if no vegetables are permitted. Otherwise, you may boil with the chicken some sliced onion and sliced turnip, with a grated parsnip and a sliced potato, straining out the vegetables with the shreds of fowl. You may reserve the white meat of the breast and wings to make another dish, if the patient is permitted to take it. This is the white meat cut off the bones, and stewed slowly in fresh oyster liquid, with a bit of nice butter. If the patient is well enough, stir in a beaten egg just before the stew is taken from the fire.
Oyster Soup for Invalids.—Remove the gristle from a dozen fine large fresh oysters. Take half their liquor and mix it with an equal portion of very good milk, seasoning it with three or four blades of mace, and a stalk of celery scraped and cut into pieces. When it has boiled and been skimmed well, strain it over the oysters, and let all simmer together till the oysters are plumped, but do not let them come to a boil. Serve it up in a bowl, with some milk biscuit to eat with it.
Clam Soup for Invalids.—Where salt is permitted, cut up and boil slowly in their own liquor a dozen or more small sand clams. When well boiled and skimmed, strain the liquor into a clean sauce-pan, and thicken it with bread crumbs, and a small bit of nice fresh butter. The clams are of no further use. Throw them away.