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SKATE SOUP (a maigre soup)
Take four pounds of skate, and boil it in four quarts of water till the water is reduced one-half; then add six onions, some turnips, celery, carrots, sweet herbs, and parsley. When boiled enough, strain, and thicken with butter rolled in flour. Fry the inside of a roll, chop up some of the fish with a little parsley and butter, and add these to the soup before serving. Two or three anchovies, some anchovy sauce, or a red herring may be boiled in this soup without destroying its maigre character.
A Lenten fish soup built on the gelatinous quality of skate cartilage, which does the work that meat stock would otherwise do. Nothing here is difficult, but the reduction is long and the fish must be very fresh.
- The hinge: reduce by half, uncoveredFour quarts down to two takes roughly 1.5 to 2 hours at a steady simmer. This is what concentrates the gelatin from the skate's cartilage and gives the soup body; rushing it leaves you with thin, faintly fishy water.
- Buy skate wings, and smell themAsk for about 4 lb of skate wing on the cartilage, not skinned fillets. Skate develops ammonia quickly as urea in its flesh breaks down; a sharp ammonia smell means it is past use. Some large skate and ray species are under fishing restriction, so buy from a counter that can name the species.
- "Maigre"A maigre soup is a lean or fast-day soup, made without meat or meat stock. The note about anchovies and red herring is there because fish, unlike flesh, was permitted on fast days.
- Vegetables go in lateSix onions is not a misprint, but it is a lot of onion for two quarts; four is closer to modern taste. Adding them after the reduction, as written, should keep them from disintegrating into pulp.
- Thickening"Butter rolled in flour" is beurre mani\, kneaded with an equal weight of flour; about 1 to 2 oz of each will lightly thicken two quarts. Whisk it into the strained, simmering broth in pieces and cook two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- The fried roll"The inside of a roll" means the crumb, torn into pieces and fried in butter until golden \ croutons, in effect. Fry them at the end and add at the table so they do not go soft.
- Returning the fishPick the cooked flesh off the cartilage while it is still warm; it comes away in ribbons. Fold it in with the parsley and butter just before serving and do not boil it again, or it shreds to nothing.
- Anchovy, and saltTwo or three salted anchovies, a spoon of anchovy sauce (Worcestershire is a reasonable stand-in), or a whole red herring all add salt as well as savour. Season the soup only after they have gone in.
- YieldAbout two quarts finished, serving six as a first course.
Cassell's places this among its maigre soups \ dishes designed for the Catholic and Anglican fast days that still shaped English menus in the late nineteenth century, when Fridays, Lent and the Ember days called for cookery without meat or meat broth. Skate was a natural choice: cheap, abundant on the British coast, and unusually rich in cartilage, so it yields a gelatinous stock that behaves a little like a meat consomm\ without breaking the rule. The anchovy and red herring at the end are the same trick working harder, borrowing the deep savoury note that a fast-day cook could not get from bacon or beef. Skate was long regarded in England as a poor man's fish, partly because of its habit of smelling of ammonia if kept even a day too long.