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Hake Soup
Cut five pounds of hake into neat slices, and put these into a stewpan with a carrot, a turnip, an onion, a handful of parsley, half a blade of mace, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, one tea-spoonful of pepper, half a tea-spoonful of bruised celeryseed, tied in muslin, and two quarts of cold water. When the soup has boiled a quarter of an hour, take out half the fish, remove the skin and bone, and cut into neat pieces, which must be put aside until wanted. Return the bones and trimmings to the saucepan, and simmer gently for two hours. Strain the soup, thicken it with a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with a tea-cupful of new milk, and put it on the fire again, and with it the pieces of fish which have been put aside. Let them boil until they are sufficiently cooked, which will be in a few minutes, and take off immediately, or they will break. Send toasted bread cut into dice to table with the soup. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for six persons.
A straightforward fish soup built on its own stock, with the best pieces of flesh held back and returned at the end. Two things in the method are worth adjusting: the length of the stock simmer and the moment the reserved fish goes in.
- The hinge: the reserved fishThe pieces set aside need two to four minutes in the finished soup, no more, and they must come off the heat the instant they flake. The recipe's own warning is the important line in the whole thing — hake is a soft, large-flaked fish that collapses into threads if pushed.
- Two hours is too long for fish bonesModern practice simmers fish stock 20 to 30 minutes, on the reasoning that longer extraction adds little strength and can dull or muddy the flavour. Twenty-five minutes on the trimmings will give you a cleaner soup than the original two hours.
- Buying hakeFive pounds of hake on the bone is roughly two whole small fish or one large one; ask for it cut into steaks and keep the frame and head, which add gelatine to the stock. Cod, haddock or pollock all substitute, though they are firmer-fleshed.
- StewpanA wide, heavy-based pan of about five quarts. Two quarts of water over five pounds of fish wants room, and a wide pan lets you lift out the half-cooked pieces without breaking them.
- New milkSimply fresh milk, unskimmed and unsoured. Whole milk is the equivalent. A tea-cupful is usually reckoned at somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a cup, and the tablespoon of flour whisked into it makes a very light body — this is a broth, not a chowder.
- Mace and celery seedHalf a blade of mace is a shard about the size of a thumbnail; a quarter teaspoon of ground mace works if blade is unavailable, though it will cloud the soup. Bruise the celery seed in a mortar before tying it in muslin or its flavour never leaves the husk.
- SeasoningTwo teaspoons of salt into two quarts is modest for a fish stock; taste again after the milk and flour go in, which flattens the salt noticeably.
- The toasted diceSmall croutons, called sippets in older books, served separately so they stay crisp. Yield is the stated six, as a first course.
Hake was for a long time the cheap end of the British cod family — abundant off the south-west and Irish coasts, soft-fleshed, and disdained in London markets in favour of firmer cod and turbot; Cassell's quotes the whole soup at two shillings for six people. Part of the British catch was salted and shipped to Spain and Portugal, where hake has generally been the more prized fish. The construction of the soup is textbook nineteenth-century domestic economy: one purchase does two jobs, the trimmings and bones making the liquid while the best slices are held back to be the garnish, so nothing is bought twice.