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Eel Soup, White
Set a saucepan of water on the fire; season with salt, whole pepper, a blade of mace, a strip of lemon-peel, and a bunch of the most fragrant sweet herbs at command. When it boils, throw in the eels. As soon as they are done enough (and they are spoiled if done too much)--just enough to let the flesh come away from the bone-take them out, split them in two, and remove the bone. Each length of eel will thus make two pieces, which should be left entire. Set them aside. Chop finely three or four white onions. Roll a lump of butter in flour; put it into a stewpan with the onions; moisten gradually with a little of the eel broth. When the onions are tender, add the rest of the liquor (removing the herbs and the lemon-peel), stirring it in gradually, with a tea-cupful of fresh milk. Throw in the eel meats, and set the soup aside until they are hot through. While they are so heating, you may further thicken with a couple of egg-yolks well worked into a little of the liquor. Taste if it is sufficiently seasoned. You will find an almost imperceptible dust of sugar an improvement. In fact, most white soups, even when seasoned with salt, are the better for a sprinkling with sugar.
A Victorian white soup built on a poaching liquor, an onion velouté and an egg liaison. The original gives no quantities, so the proportions below are the working ones.
- ScaleFor four to six servings, reckon on about 2 lb of eel and 2 quarts of water, which yields a well-flavoured broth without further stock. Three or four onions, 2 oz butter and 2 oz flour will thicken that volume to a light soup rather than a sauce.
- Do not boil after the yolks go inThis is the hinge. Once the two yolks are tempered with a ladle of hot liquor and stirred back, the soup must stay below a simmer, around 160-175F, or it will curdle into threads. The same applies to the milk: add it off the boil.
- Poaching the eelThe warning about overcooking is exact. The eel is done the moment the flesh will part from the backbone, and the recipe gives no timing; go by the fish, not the clock. Test the thickest piece and pull the lot at once, since past that point it collapses and turns woolly.
- Sourcing eelEuropean eel is critically endangered and CITES-listed, and supply is tightly restricted; much of the eel now sold is farmed, including Japanese and American eel, often already smoked or grilled. Buy it fresh and skinned from a fishmonger if you can, and note that eel blood contains a toxin that is destroyed by cooking, so it should never be tasted raw and cuts should be washed.
- A blade of maceOne whole piece of the lacy aril from a nutmeg, not ground mace. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace, or a light grating of nutmeg, stands in; both are stronger by volume than the whole blade.
- Sweet herbsThe period shorthand for the mild kitchen herbs, tied in a bundle: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, perhaps marjoram or savory. Tie them with string so they lift out cleanly, as the recipe requires before the liquor goes back in.
- Roll a lump of butter in flourThe old flour-coated butter thickening, close kin to beurre manie though a rolled lump takes up rather less flour than equal weights; here it sweats the onions and thickens in one step. Keep the onions pale and let the flour cook for a couple of minutes in the butter or the soup tastes raw and pasty.
- The dust of sugarA pinch at most for the whole pot; the recipe asks for an almost imperceptible dust. It is there to round the onion and the flour, not to sweeten, and the effect disappears if you can taste it.
- ServingLadle so each bowl gets a whole boned fillet, and finish with chopped parsley or a squeeze of lemon. The soup does not reheat well once the yolks are in; make it to serve.
White soups " \,, almonds or egg yolks, and pointedly not browned — were a fixture of English cookery from the eighteenth century onward, when a clear distinction was drawn between brown soups built on caramelised meat and white ones meant to look delicate at table. Eel was cheap and abundant in British rivers and the Thames estuary well into the nineteenth century, sold live from tanks and eaten by rich and poor alike, which is why a book of this kind could treat it as an everyday soup fish rather than a delicacy. The instruction to lift the eel the moment the flesh parts from the bone, and to keep the fillets whole and merely warmed through in the finished soup, reflects a kitchen that knew the fish well; the sprinkle of sugar was evidently current practice, the recipe itself holding that most white soups are the better for it.