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Haddock Soup
Take three haddocks, fillet them, and put the skins, heads, tails, bones, and fins into a saucepan, with two quarts of stock, a bunch of parsley, two or three onions, and half a dozen peppercorns, and let them simmer gently for an hour and a half. Strain the soup. Melt two ounces of butter in a saucepan, add two ounces of lean ham, cut into dice, let them remain until brown, then mix in, very smoothly, two table-spoonfuls of flour. When this is brown, add, very gradually, the strained soup, and simmer for a quarter of an hour. Put in the pieces of fish, and, when they are sufficiently cooked, serve in a soup-tureen. A little ketchup or Madeira may be added, if liked. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost, 1s. 5d. per quart.
A straightforward fish soup built on a brown roux, from the era when the fishmonger handed over the whole fish and the frames went straight into the pot. Two timings in the original need revising.
- The frames simmer far too longFish bones give up everything they have in 20 to 30 minutes; after that they turn bitter and glue-like. Simmer the heads, skins and bones for half an hour at most, then strain, even though the text says an hour and a half.
- And the fillets cook in minutes"When they are sufficiently cooked" means three to five minutes for haddock cut into serving pieces, off a bare simmer. Slide them in, cover, take the pan off the heat, and let residual heat finish them or they will shred.
- What "two quarts of stock" meansThe book takes for granted a household pot of light meat or vegetable stock stood ready. Plain water works perfectly well here since the fish frames and ham are doing the flavouring; a mild chicken stock is fine, a strong beef one will bury the fish. Two quarts here is imperial measure -- about 9 1/2 US cups, or 8 cups if you are working from a US quart.
- Three haddocksMarket haddock of the period would have been a modest whole fish rather than a large one, though sizes varied. Buy about 2 lb of skin-on fillets plus 1 to 2 lb of bones and heads; a fishmonger will often part with frames cheaply or free.
- Brown the roux, gentlyThe ham dice and the flour are both taken to brown, which is where the soup's colour and depth come from. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly; scorched flour cannot be rescued, and add the strained stock a ladle at a time to avoid lumps.
- Ketchup is not tomatoIn a Victorian British kitchen "ketchup" means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin, dark, salty condiment. A teaspoon of mushroom ketchup, or a dash of Worcestershire, gives the intended effect; for the Madeira alternative the recipe says only "a little", so start with a tablespoon or two.
- Lean hamTwo ounces of a dry-cured ham such as prosciutto or a good country ham, cut into small dice. Sweet supermarket sandwich ham will not brown properly or contribute much.
- Yield and finishingFive or six as a first course. Season only at the end, once the ham has had its say, and a squeeze of lemon and chopped parsley on serving are entirely in keeping.
Haddock was the everyday white fish of Victorian Britain, landed in quantity at Aberdeen, Grimsby and Hull and moved inland by rail cheaply enough that the book could quote this soup at 1s. 5d. a quart -- the kind of costing that let a cook argue her case to the household accounts. The construction is thoroughly of its period: a brown roux coloured with browned ham, in the manner of the French sauce espagnole tradition that shaped English cookery writing after Soyer and Francatelli, and quite unlike the milk-based fish chowders and cullen skink of the same coastline. The instruction to save skins, heads, tails, bones and fins reflects a kitchen where the fish arrived whole and the frames were expected to yield a stock.