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Fish Soup
Slice two middle-sized onions, fry them a light brown in butter, and fry also three pounds of eels--they should not be skinned. When just browned (five minutes will do them), add three quarts of boiling water, and while boiling skim carefully. Throw in allspice and black pepper, one-eighth of an ounce, half an ounce of the leaves of lemon, thyme, and winter savoury mixed, and a good bunch of parsley (all green). When the soup has boiled slowly about two hours, during which time it should have been well skimmed, strain and thicken. Melt three ounces of butter, and stir into it as much flour as will absorb the butter. When quite dry, pour some of the soup to it and stir until smooth; then add the remainder by degrees, and simmer altogether for a few minutes, when the soup should be strained into a clean saucepan over neatly-cut pieces of fish, such as soles, eels, plaice, flounder, skate etc., all fried, and forcemeat balls. Keep hot, and serve in about ten minutes after the soup has been poured over the fish. Good fish soup may be made with a skate, a flounder, and a couple of small eels cut into pieces, and fried in butter with an onion sliced, then boiled with half a gallon of water till done, and flavoured with salt and pepper. This stock will keep several days in cold weather.
A Victorian two-stage fish soup: eels and aromatics make a strongly gelatinous broth, which is then thickened and poured over separately fried fish at the last moment. The hinge is that second stage — the garnish fish is fried and only warmed through in the soup, never boiled in it.
- Leave the eel skin onThe instruction not to skin the eels is deliberate: eel skin and bones carry the collagen that gives this stock its body and slight stickiness. Ask the fishmonger to gut and cut the eel into sections but leave the skin intact.
- Sourcing eelEuropean eel is critically endangered and its trade is tightly restricted; supply is nothing like the Victorian glut. Farmed eel from a reputable supplier, or a swap to conger, monkfish bones and gurnard, will give a comparable gelatinous stock.
- The spice and herb weightsOne-eighth of an ounce is about 3.5 g of allspice and black pepper together, so roughly half a teaspoon of each, bruised. Half an ounce of mixed fresh herb leaves is about 14 g, a good handful rather than a pinch — this is a well-herbed broth.
- "Leaves of lemon, thyme, and winter savoury"The comma is most likely a printer's slip rather than a third herb: read it as lemon thyme and winter savory, though the reading cannot be certain. Winter savory is peppery and resinous; if you cannot get it, use a smaller quantity of fresh sage and thyme together rather than summer savory.
- Quantities and yieldThree quarts of water reduces over two hours to roughly two and a half quarts of finished soup, enough for ten to twelve as a first course. The smaller version at the end uses half a gallon, or two quarts.
- The thickeningThree ounces of butter will take about three ounces of flour — a blond roux, cooked until it stops smelling raw. Add the hot soup a ladleful at a time, whisking smooth before the next; the result is a lightly bound broth, not a chowder.
- Strain twiceStrain once after the two-hour simmer to remove eel bones and herb stalks, and again after thickening to catch any flour lumps.
- Timing the garnishFry the sole, plaice, flounder and skate pieces just before serving and pour the hot soup over them in the tureen. The ten minutes standing time is all the cooking they need; simmering them in the soup will shred the flesh.
- Forcemeat ballsThese would have been a fish forcemeat — pounded white fish or lobster with breadcrumbs, suet or butter, egg and herbs, rolled small and poached or fried. Modern fish quenelles or small crab dumplings do the same job.
- "Will keep several days in cold weather"That means an unheated larder in winter. Fish stock is fragile: refrigerate within two hours and use within two days, or freeze it.
Eel was the workhorse fish of nineteenth-century London — cheap, kept alive in tanks and barges at Billingsgate, much of it brought in live from Holland by eel schuyts as the Thames fishery declined, and sold stewed or jellied from street stalls. That cheapness explains why a general household dictionary could open a fish soup with three pounds of eel and treat it as the base rather than the centrepiece: the eel is there for gelatin and depth, and the sole, plaice and skate laid in the tureen are what the diner is meant to notice. The two-stage construction — a long-simmered strained stock, thickened with a butter-and-flour liaison, poured over separately fried garnish — is standard mid-Victorian practice, and a cousin of the Dutch and English water souchy. Nothing about the method has dated; only the eels have, the European eel having collapsed from a staple of the urban poor to a CITES-listed, trade-restricted species within a century.