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Codling Soup
Take two or three codlings, remove the flesh from the bones, and put them, with the heads, into three quarts of good veal stock; add a bunch of savoury herbs and a large onion stuck with three cloves. Simmer the soup gently for two hours, then strain it, return it to the stewpan, and thicken it with a lump of butter rolled in flour. Put the slices of fish into the soup, with a glass of sherry, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and two grains of cayenne. Simmer for twenty minutes, then serve at once. A dozen oysters, with their liquor, is an improvement to the soup. Probable cost, 10d. per quart, exclusive of the wine and oysters. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian fish soup built on a veal stock base — a combination that reads oddly now but was standard practice when fish stock alone was thought too thin for a dinner-table soup. Two of the original timings need adjusting; the rest translates directly.
- What a codling isNot the apple: a codling here is a young cod, generally 1½ to 3 lb. Two or three small whole cod, or one cod of about 4 lb, filleted with the head and frame kept for the stock, gives the same result.
- The timing that mattersTwenty minutes of simmering will turn cod slices to cotton wool. The fish needs 4 to 6 minutes in barely trembling liquid, added at the very end. Make the flavoured stock for its full two hours by all means, but treat the fish as a garnish, not an ingredient to be cooked in.
- OystersIf you add the dozen oysters, put them in with their strained liquor in the last minute or two, off the boil. Held longer they shrink and toughen. Their liquor is salty, so hold back some of the teaspoon of salt until you have tasted.
- Three quartsAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, so three quarts is roughly 3.4 litres, or about 14 US cups. Some of that will reduce over the two hours' simmering, leaving rather less finished soup — still ample for the stated six persons.
- Two grains of cayenneA grain is an apothecary weight of about 65 mg, so two grains is a large pinch — roughly a sixteenth of a teaspoon. Add it cautiously and taste.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié. Work equal weights of soft butter and flour together — about 30 g of each for this quantity — and whisk it into the strained, simmering stock in small pieces. Give it two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste before the fish goes in.
- Stock and sherryGood veal stock means an unsalted, lightly gelatinous white stock; a mild unsalted chicken stock is the closest supermarket substitute. "A glass of sherry" in this period is about 2 fl oz; use a dry fino or amontillado rather than a cream sherry.
- The bouquetA "bunch of savoury herbs" would usually mean something like parsley, thyme and a bay leaf tied together. Tie it and the clove-stuck onion so both come out cleanly at the straining.
Cod was the cheap, abundant fish of the British table — the 10d. per quart costing puts this soup firmly in the reach of a modest household, with the sherry and oysters listed separately as optional upgrades for a company dinner. The word "codling" for a young cod is old and now largely confined to the fish trade, and it has nothing to do with the codling apple or the codling moth; the two words are generally traced to unrelated roots. The clove-stuck onion and the tied bunch of herbs are the same aromatics an English cook of the period would have dropped into almost any stockpot, and the finish of butter rolled in flour rather than a separately made roux is characteristic of domestic rather than professional practice.