Boil a large fish in 2 quarts of water; season with salt and paprica. Add 1 sliced onion, 2 leeks cut fine, 2 sprigs of parsley and 1 bay-leaf. Let cook well; then remove the fish. Add 1 tablespoonful of butter and 1 quart of oysters. Let boil ten minutes. Add 1 cup of hot cream; season to taste and serve very hot.
A fish-stock-and-oyster soup finished with cream, written in the telegraphic style of a book that gave each dish a single paragraph. Two things need attention: the oysters and the fish itself.
- The oysters are the hingeTen minutes of boiling turns shucked oysters into rubber. Drop them into the finished, barely simmering broth and cook only until the edges curl, about two minutes, then take the pot off the heat.
- "A large fish"The original assumes a whole fish, head and bones included, since that is what gives the broth body. A 2-3 lb whole white-fleshed fish (cod, haddock, hake) in 2 quarts of water is the right scale. Fillets alone will give you a thin, flat liquid.
- Strain before finishingThe recipe says only to remove the fish, but the broth will hold scales, fin bones and spent aromatics. Pour it through a sieve before the butter and oysters go in. The cooked flesh can be flaked and returned at the end.
- "Paprica"Simply paprika, an alternative spelling that turns up in English-language books of the period. Sweet paprika is the likely intent, though the book does not specify; a teaspoon is plenty in 2 quarts.
- "A quart of oysters"Shucked oysters sold by liquid measure, roughly 2 lb. Include their liquor, which is a large part of the seasoning; the recipe seasons twice, once at the start and again to taste at the end.
- The creamHeating it separately, as instructed, is not fussiness. Cold cream poured into a hot, salty broth is more likely to break. Warm it and stir it in off the heat.
- "Let cook well"Twenty to thirty minutes at a bare simmer is enough for a fish broth. Longer extracts bitterness from the bones and nothing useful from the fish.
- YieldAbout 3 quarts finished, serving six to eight as a first course or four as a main with bread.
The 365-dishes format — one recipe a day, each labelled with a nationality — belongs to a genre of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks that sold the idea of variety to the middle-class housekeeper, and the attributions were often loose. This one is plausible enough in outline: fish simmered whole with leek, onion, bay and parsley is the backbone of Scandinavian fiskesuppe, and the cream finish is often said to reflect Norwegian practice. The quart of oysters is the American hand showing. Oysters were cheap and abundant on the eastern seaboard through the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the period added them to soups, stuffings, sauces and pies the way a later generation reached for canned mushroom soup. The result is less a dish from Norway than an American cook's idea of one.