Chicken Soup

It's best to prepare chicken soup a day ahead so that the flavors meld.

Select an old fowl, pluck, singe and draw. Stuff it with a large lump of fat bacon, sew up the neck and vent, truss, flour it well, tie it up in a cloth and put it into a saucepan with sufficient warm water to almost cover; add one carrot cut in slices and two onions and a couple of cloves. Cover the pan over securely; allow the water to come slowly to a boil and then simmer for three hours or so according to the size and age of the bird. Take it out, remove the cloth, put the chicken into a bowl, cover it completely with any desired sauce and let it remain for a day. Break the fowl up in pieces, put back in the saucepan with the liquor; add one breakfast cupful of well-washed rice, a small turnip cut into pieces and a blade of mace and boil slowly for a couple of hours: rub as much as possible through a sieve, season to taste with salt and pepper.