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Eel Soup
Soak three pounds of middle-sized eels in salt and water. Cut off the heads, bone, and slice them thinly. Simmer them in a stewpan, with three ounces of good butter. Allow them ten minutes, and then add two quarts of water, an onion sliced, a bunch of sweet herbs, three blades of mace, some peppercorns, salt to taste, and a small roll. Simmer till the eels are tender, then remove them, and strain the liquid. Make a smooth batter with two table-spoonfuls of flour and a quarter of a pint of cream; put this and the liquid together, and boil up, to pour over the sliced eels in the tureen. A piece of toasted bread cut into dice may be sent up with it. Time, one hour or more. Probable cost, 1s. per quart. Sufficient for eight persons.
A Victorian fish soup built on the same logic as a cream of chicken: cook the flesh in butter, extract a broth, then bind it with flour and cream at the end. Most of the work is in getting the eel prepared.
- The hinge: the cream liaisonWhisk the flour into the cold cream until perfectly smooth, then temper it with a ladle of the hot strained broth before adding it back. Tipped straight into boiling liquid it will go lumpy, and once the cream is in, keep it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil.
- "A small roll"Almost certainly a plain bread roll added whole to the broth, a common period thickener; it softens during simmering and would be worked through or removed at the straining. Roughly 2 oz of stale white bread does the same job.
- Quarts and pintsImperial measures: two quarts is about 2.3 litres (9-10 US cups), and a quarter of a pint of cream is 5 fl oz, or a scant 2/3 US cup. Three ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons.
- Sourcing the eelFreshwater eel is not a casual supermarket buy. European eel is under CITES trade restriction and other Anguilla species have since come under restriction too, so check the current status of whatever you are offered; farmed eel at an Asian or specialist fishmonger is the usual route, and ask for it killed, skinned and gutted. Conger eel or a firm white fish will make the soup, though with less body.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a toxin that irritates on contact with cuts and eyes; it is destroyed by heat, which is why eel is never served raw. Rinse the boards and your hands well after boning, and keep the flesh out of your eyes.
- Mace and sweet herbsThree blades of mace is very roughly 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground; the recipe adds it at the start with the water and aromatics. "A bunch of sweet herbs" means a bouquet of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf, tied so it lifts out cleanly.
- TimingThinly sliced eel will be tender well inside half an hour; the "one hour or more" is the time for the whole dish, not for the eel alone. Fish out the eel as soon as it yields, or it will shred into the broth.
- ServingEight servings as a first course. The soup is poured over the reserved eel in the tureen so the flesh is warmed but not cooked again, with fried or toasted bread dice passed separately.
Eel was one of the cheapest animal foods in nineteenth-century England, and this soup's costing of a shilling a quart suggests it was within reach of a modest household. London in particular ran on eels: they arrived alive in Thames-side holding boats from Holland and Ireland, were sold from barrows and eel-pie shops, and turned up stewed, jellied, in pies and in soups like this one. The recipe's construction is pure period technique for a "white" soup, using a bread roll and a flour-and-cream liaison rather than a stock made from bones, and finishing with mace and peppercorns. The eel's fall from favour in British kitchens came later, as the fisheries collapsed and the taste for river fish faded, so what reads today as an exotic dish was, for the book's first readers, thoroughly everyday.