390 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
pint of water; stir until it boils, and then allow it to simmer 
for about half an hour; add pepper, salt, and nutmeg to taste. 
When done, rub the whole through a fine sieve, and return it to 
a clean stewpan. Mix your cream with yolks of egg, and add 
this to the soup as soon as it boils ; stir long enough to bind the 
eggs, but avoid its boiling further. Stamp out some thin crusts 
ot bread about the size of a shilling piece ; pour the soup into a 
tureen, and serve with the bread-crusts put in at the last. 
Ingredients for the above: Sorrel, one pound; milk, one pint ; 
flour, half an ounce; butter, three ounces; one small onion, 
one small carrot, two egg yolks, half a gill of cream, pepper, salt, 
nutmeg, and crusts of bread as directed. French chefs call 
Sorrel Soup “ Potage a la bonne femme,” perhaps because of its 
slightly acidulated flavour. Sweet things grow tiresome after 
a while: for which reason both women, and soup, should have 
a little spice of—let us not say acid—in their composition. 
Formerly, on account of its grateful acidity, a conserve of 
“Juluja,” or the “ Alleluia”? herb, Wood Sorrel, was ordered 
by the London College to be made from the leaves, and petals, 
with sugar, and orange peel. An anti-putrescent gargle is to 
be concocted against quinsy with the same parts of this plant. 
The garden Rhubarb owes its bright red colouring to varying 
states of its natural pigment, chlorophyll, in combination with 
oxygen. For culinary purposes the petiole, or stalk of the broad 
leaf, is used. Its chief nutrient property is glucose, which is 
identical with grape-sugar. But the presence of oxalic acid 
makes these stalks as objectionable for gouty persons as is Sorrel, 
for the reason already explained. The garden Rhubarb also 
possesses albumin, gum, and mineral matters, with a small 
quantity of some volatile essence. The Turkey Rhubarb of 
medicine is likewise a Dock grown in Western China, and Thibet. 
Garden Rhubarb is anything but an invariably harmless article 
of vegetable diet, even for some persons who are not gouty, or 
with lime in their system. Its free use at table will now and 
again provoke in susceptible subjects, whether children, or adults, 
congestion of the kidneys, passage of bloody urine, nettle-rash, 
colic of the bowels, feverishness, and a general aching of the 
limbs. But it is chiefly Rhubarb of the rougher sort as grown 
wholesale for the markets, which thus disagrees, whilst the forced 
variety of cultivated garden produce does not give rise to such 
troubles, whether of the kidneys, or of the skin. This Rhubarb 
