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Prawn and Lobster Soup
Take a freshly-boiled hen lobster, remove the meat from the tail and claws, cut it into neat square pieces, and put these aside. Pick fifty prawns, put the head and bruised shells of the lobster and the shells of the prawns into a stewpan with a quart of stock, a sliced onion, and an ounce of butter. Let them simmer gently for an hour, then pour over them an additional two quarts of stock. Mix six ounces of flour with a little cold stock, add this to the soup, and stir until it begins to thicken. Draw it back, set it by the side of the fire, let it simmer gently for half an hour, then press the whole through a fine sieve. Return the soup to the stewpan and let it boil; skim carefully, and add whatever seasoning is required. Put in the picked prawns and the lobster meat, let them get quite hot, add a breakfast-cupful of thick cream, and serve. Time, two hours or more. Sufficient for ten or twelve persons.
A classic shellfish bisque built on a shell stock, thickened with flour rather than rice or bread. Two details need attention before you start: the flour quantity is heavy by modern taste, and the cooked shellfish goes in at the very end.
- The hinge: shellfish at the endThe picked prawns and lobster meat are already cooked. They go in only to heat through, a minute or two in soup that is hot but no longer boiling. Any longer and they turn fibrous and squeaky.
- Imperial liquid measuresAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, so the stock here totals about 3.4 litres (roughly 14 US cups) — a quart for the shells, two quarts added after. A "breakfast-cupful" of cream is around 8-10 fl oz.
- Six ounces of flour is a lotThat gives a distinctly thick, old-fashioned pottage. For a modern bisque of this volume, 2-3 oz (60-85 g) gives body without pastiness. Whisk it into cold stock to a smooth slurry before it meets the pan, or it will lump.
- "Draw it back"Move the pan off the direct heat to the cooler edge of the range — on a modern hob, drop to the lowest simmer. The half hour there is what cooks out the raw flour taste.
- A hen lobster and its coralHen (female) lobsters were usually called for on account of the roe, dark green raw and coral-red once cooked, long used to colour and flavour shellfish soups. A fishmonger may be able to sex a lobster for you; if yours has coral, sieve it and stir it in at the end for colour, or use a little tomato purée.
- Fifty prawnsVictorian prawns were small, shell-on, and sold cooked. Reckon on about 1-1.5 lb (500-700 g) shell-on cooked prawns, which gives roughly 8-10 oz picked meat plus the shells the stock depends on.
- Sieving"Press the whole through a fine sieve" means force the softened shells, onion and thickened liquid through with a wooden spoon or ladle — this is where the flavour comes from. A short blitz in a blender first (shells and all) makes the job far easier; then sieve twice, the second time through fine mesh, to catch shell grit.
- Cream and holdingAdd the cream off the boil and avoid returning the soup to a hard boil, which risks the cream splitting. Serves 10-12 as written; the shell stock can be made a day ahead and refrigerated.
Cassell's places this among its shellfish soups, at a time when both lobster and prawns were markedly cheaper propositions than they are now. Lobster was plentiful enough in nineteenth-century Britain to appear as a soup base, a sauce, and a supper savoury, and small brown and pink prawns were a routine seaside and market commodity, sold already boiled by the pint. What defines the method is thrift as much as flavour: the meat is set aside and the heads and "bruised shells" carry the whole soup. The flour-and-cream finish rather than a rice or breadcrumb thickening, and the very generous six ounces of flour, suit a soup expected to be substantial enough to open a long dinner without leaving anyone hungry.