Cut two kinds of fish into slices; season with salt. Mince 2 cloves of garlic, 2 sprigs of parsley, 2 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay-leaves very fine. Add a pinch of pepper. Roll the fish in the spice. Then fry 2 sliced onions in butter; add 1 cup of tomatoes, the juice of a lemon and 2 cups of water. Let boil up. Add the fish and let boil until done. Remove the fish to a platter. Add a cup of white wine to the sauce and 1 tablespoonful of sugar. Boil up and pour over the fish. Serve with toast.
A stripped-down bouillabaisse in the daily-dish format: no saffron, no fennel, no rouille, and quantities of fish left entirely to the cook. The instructions assume you know what a fish stew looks like, so the useful work is in filling the gaps.
- Quantities of fishThe recipe never says how much. The aromatics, cup of tomatoes and two cups of water suit roughly 2 lb of fish total, serving four. "Two kinds" is the point — traditionally a firm fish and a softer one.
- Cut thickness"Slices" means crosswise steaks or thick chunks about 1 to 1½ inches, not fillets laid flat. Thin fillets disintegrate in a broth handled this briskly.
- Do not let it boilThe hinge. Bring the broth to a boil, add the fish, then hold it at a bare simmer for 6 to 10 minutes depending on thickness. A rolling boil shreds the flesh and leaves the broth cloudy.
- Stagger the fishAdd the firmer fish first and the delicate one three or four minutes later, so both finish together. The original assumes fish of similar density.
- A cup of tomatoesIn books of this period this generally meant canned or stewed tomatoes with their liquid rather than fresh. A cup of chopped canned tomatoes with juice is the closest equivalent.
- Rolling in the spiceThe minced garlic, parsley, thyme and bay are meant to coat the fish and then fall into the broth. Bay leaf minced fine is unusual and stays woody — better to chop the herbs and garlic and drop the bay leaves in whole, fishing them out at the end.
- The wine and sugarBoth go in after the fish is out, and both need a real boil of two or three minutes to cook off the raw taste of the alcohol. A tablespoon of sugar is a lot by modern taste; start with a teaspoon and adjust against the lemon juice.
- The sauce is thinIt is a broth, not a coating sauce. Serve it in shallow bowls over the toast rather than pouring it onto a flat platter, or reduce it by a third after the fish comes out.
- ToastRead this as the Provençal croûtes — thick slices of stale bread, dried in the oven and rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, set in the bowl under the fish.
Marseille's claim on any fish dish in a period cookbook is bouillabaisse, and this is a domesticated, portable version of it: the garlic, onion, tomato, bay, thyme, lemon and the two kinds of fish are all there, while the saffron, fennel and the rockfish of the Mediterranean rock coast "the elements that require a Marseille fish market " are quietly dropped. The rule that a proper bouillabaisse needs several species is generally traced to its origin as a fishermen's pot made from the unsellable remainder of the catch, and "two kinds" is the smallest gesture toward it a home cook could make. Books of this kind, arranged as a dish a day with a nationality attached to each, were a staple of the American household market in the early twentieth century; their business was novelty rather than fidelity, and the French entries in particular tend to be regional names attached to recipes a general grocer's stock could actually supply.