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Sailor's Soup
Clean a small pike, a tench, a carp, and a moderate-sized eel; cut them into small lengths, throw over them a little sea-water to cleanse, and salt them at the same time; an hour after wash and drain them on a napkin; then lay each fish separately in a saute-pan containing two onions, two carrots, and a pound of mushrooms sliced, some parsley-roots, bay-leaf, basil, thyme, two cloves, a clove of nutmeg, a pinch of pepper and grated nutmeg, half a pint of Chablis wine, and a ladleful of good stock; let them simmer for ten minutes, take out the carp, and ten minutes after drain the remaining fish on a baking-sheet, and observe that no fragment of the seasoning remains about the fish. Lay them gradually in the tureen, which cover and place in the hot closet; strain the essence of the fish through a sieve; add to it some more stock; clarify it, and pour it while boiling into the tureen; mingling with it roots dressed in some consomme; the same as in the recipe SANTE, POTAGE DE, but without the lettuces and sorrel.
A grand-manner freshwater fish soup of the kind Cassell's borrowed wholesale from French professional kitchens: the fish are poached in an aromatic wine bath, lifted out clean, and the cooking liquor is turned into the clear broth poured over them. Most of the work is in the sequencing and in keeping the finished bowl free of debris.
- The hinge: cook each fish to its own clockThe instruction to lay each fish in separately, to lift the carp out after ten minutes and to drain the rest ten minutes after that, is the whole technique. The carp is pulled first; pike, tench and the fattier, denser eel are given the longer stretch. Cooking and lifting them all as one mass risks shredded flesh on the tender fish and underdone eel.
- Sea-waterA rinse in clean seawater is simply a firming brine. The modern equivalent is roughly 35 g of salt per litre of cold water, about 2 tablespoons per quart. The hour's rest before washing and draining is a light cure, not a preservation step.
- The fish themselvesTench is effectively unobtainable outside angling circles, and European eel is now under trade restriction, so source eel carefully or leave it out. Carp is available live or whole at Chinese, Polish and Jewish fishmongers; pike from good game or river suppliers. Perch, zander, catfish or trout give a workable mixed-freshwater pot.
- Half a pint of ChablisAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Any dry unoaked white will do the same job; the point is acidity to cut the muddiness that river fish can carry.
- "A clove of nutmeg"Ambiguous, and pepper and grated nutmeg are already listed separately a few words later. It most likely means a blade of mace or a piece of whole nutmeg, but it may be a compositor's slip for a clove of garlic. Treat it as a blade of mace.
- Parsley-rootsHamburg parsley, the white tap-rooted variety grown for its root rather than its leaf. A small parsnip plus a handful of parsley stalks stands in acceptably.
- Saute-pan and hot closetThe saute-pan here is a wide shallow pan with straight sides, chosen so the pieces lie in one layer. The hot closet is a warming cupboard or oven; no temperature is given, and the aim is only to hold the covered tureen warm without cooking the fish further, so use the lowest warm setting available.
- Clarifying the essenceStraining through a fine sieve lined with damp muslin will get you most of the way. A full egg-white raft is only worth doing if you want the glass-clear broth the original intends; it strips a little flavour along with the cloud.
- Yield and the garnishNo yield is given. The cross-reference to Potage de Sante means root vegetables cooked separately in consomme and added at the end, with the lettuce and sorrel of that recipe omitted.
This might be read as a drawing-room descendant of the matelote, the bargemen's and fishermen's stew of river fish cooked in wine, a dish associated with a number of French river regions. The name in English cookbooks preserves the working-boat association even as the method here, with its Chablis, its clarified essence and its separately turned roots, belongs entirely to the professional French kitchen that Victorian compilers like Cassell's drew on. It is also a reminder of how much freshwater fish mattered before refrigerated rail freight: pike, carp, tench and eel were pond and river staples in Britain and northern France for centuries, farmed in monastic stew-ponds and estate lakes, and only slipped out of general cookery once sea fish could reach inland markets fresh and cheap.