Asparagus Soup.
Ingredients: Three pints of beef soup or stock, thirty heads of asparagus, a little cream, butter, flour, and a little spinach.
Cut the tops off the asparagus, about half an inch long, and boil the rest. Cut off all the tender portions, and rub them through a sieve, adding a little salt. Warm three pints of stock, add a roux made of a small piece of butter and a heaping tea-spoonful of flour; then add the asparagus pulp. Boil it slowly a quarter of an hour, stirring in two or three table-spoonfuls of cream. Color the soup with a tea-spoonful of spinach green, and, just before serving it, add the asparagus-tops, which have been separately boiled.
Many like this soup, but I prefer simply boiled asparagus-points added to stock or beef soup, just before serving.