For the stock

• 1 boiling fowl or carcase, giblets, skin and legs of a fowl
• ¼ lb. lean bacon
• 2 onions
• 1 carrot
• 3 qt. water
• salt and pepper
• a bunch of herbs: parsley, thyme, marjoram
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 blade of mace
• 6 peppercorns
• lemon juice
• a strip of lemon rind

For each quart of chicken stock

• 1 oz. butter or margarine
• 1 oz. flour
• lemon juice
• nutmeg
• ½ gill cream or milk

Prepare the fowl, chop the bacon, peel and slice the vegetables; put into a large pan with the water, salt, herbs, spice, lemon juice and rind. Cook until the flesh of the chicken is absolutely white; the addition of lemon juice makes the flesh tender more quickly. Cool the stock and skim off all fat. Mince 4 oz. of the cooked chicken and moisten it with a little stock. Rub it through a coarse wire sieve. Melt the fat, stir into it the flour then the stock a little at a time; boil well. Stir the hot soup gradually into the chicken purée. Season lightly with lemon juice, salt, pepper and a trace of nutmeg. Add the cream or milk and reheat without boiling.