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Fisherman's Soup
Make a soup according to the following recipe, by which means the smallest fry may be utilised. Take all the fish caught in a day's angling--carp, dace, roach, perch, etc.--wash them in salt and water, and put them in a stewpan with a tomato, a leek, an onion, and two carrots sliced, a bunch of sweet herbs, and enough water to cover them. When boiled to a pulp, strain, and throw in as much more water as will be wanted for the soup, and boil another hour. When ready to serve, put two turnips and a head of celery, previously boiled and cut into small pieces, into the tureen, and flavour with a tea-spoonful each of soy and chilli vinegar.
A fish stock dressed up as a soup, written for the angler's mixed bag rather than the fishmonger's slab. Two things carry it: thorough cleaning of the fish before they go in, and a genuinely fine straining afterwards.
- Clean the fish properly firstThe recipe says only to wash them in salt and water, but small freshwater fish must be gutted and the gills removed or the broth turns bitter and muddy. Scales can stay, since everything is strained.
- The species are the problemCarp, dace, roach and perch are British coarse fish, and in the UK coarse fishing is now overwhelmingly catch-and-release, with byelaws restricting what may be taken. Any firm-fleshed fish with plenty of bone and head works instead — whole small bream, gurnard, or the frames and heads of white fish from a fishmonger.
- Strain twiceFish boiled "to a pulp" leaves fine bones and scales behind. Push through a colander, then pass the liquid again through a fine sieve or muslin.
- The second hour of boilingHard boiling will cloud and coarsen a fish broth; a bare simmer is safer. Note that the recipe adds fresh water at this stage to make up the soup rather than reducing it, so judge the hour by strength of flavour rather than by volume lost.
- SoyIn a Victorian English kitchen this means bottled soy sauce, then sold as a condiment alongside ketchups and used by the teaspoon as a savoury darkener. Any Chinese light soy or Japanese shoyu does the same job; a teaspoon in a large tureen is a background note, not a flavour.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with dried red chillies, once a standard cruet item and easy to make by covering a few dried chillies with cider or white wine vinegar for a week. A teaspoon of any hot pepper vinegar substitutes directly.
- Salt and the garnishSalt appears only in the water the fish are washed in; none is specified for seasoning the soup, so season at the end. The turnips and celery are cooked separately and laid in the tureen so they stay distinct — dice them small and boil until just tender, or they will collapse in the hot broth.
- YieldA day's angling is not a measurement. Reckon on about 2 lb of whole fish and heads, with only enough water to cover them for the first boil as the recipe directs, then made up with more water afterwards; the result will serve six to eight.
This belongs to a small genre of nineteenth-century "waste-nothing" recipes aimed at the sporting household rather than the cook with a market at hand, and the method is designed around fish too small and bony to serve whole. The soy and chilli vinegar at the end were both staples of the Victorian cruet stand, and they are doing here what a dash of Worcestershire or fish sauce would do in a modern kitchen. The word "fry" in the first line means young or undersized fish, not anything cooked in fat.