In recipe 7-7 you will see that the roux forms the base to which the liquid is added.
This is a traditional method of soup cookery going back perhaps two hundred years. It involves a number of critical matters of technique.
In Steps 2 and 3 the roux must be well blended so that all the flour is evenly dispersed, and the heat must be low so that the roux does not brown. If you get a brown-flour taste in a cream soup it is going to taste brown no matter what you do to it At this point the roux should look like wallpaper paste with lumps of vegetables in it.
As I have learned, soup is a liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces. Some are called potages that are thick, often creamy soups. For those of you who do not know the origins of cream. It is the yellowish fatty component of unhomogenized milk that tends to accumulate at the surface.
There is a mixture called roux, which is a mixture of flour and fat cooked together and used as a thickening agent. In the old days, families used to thicken their soups with different roux mixes to make their soup go farther for the money they paid for it. By thickening the soup it made the empty spot in a persons stomach fill up because the soup that was thickened was more filling to the average person than the soup that was not.
The technique of making soup can be classed as a practical method or art applied to some particular task. When someone says they are "Blending the Soup". It means to combine or mix so that the constituent parts are indistinguishable from one another. Whatever you add in your soup becomes the base flavor for the thickening agent. If you use beef, chicken or fish stock, then your soup will taste like the stock used. Adding browned bones or vegetables in the stock making process can heighten the taste or flavor of the soup.
One principal thing to be observed when making all kinds of soup is that no one ingredient is more powerful in the taste than another, but that all are as nearly as possible equal, and that the soup be relished in proportion to the purpose for which it designed.
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