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Bouillabaisse
"Bring me a bowl of bouillabaisse."-THACKERAY.
Put a gill of sweet oil into a kettle, with 2 medium-sized onions and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine; shake over the fire till golden brown. Add 11/2 pounds each of halibut and haddock, washed and sliced, and a bay leaf, 2 cloves, 2 thin slices of lemon; a tomato, peeled, and the seeds pressed out; a teaspoonful salt, and a saltspoonful pepper. Cover, and cook slowly twenty minutes; add a quart of boiling water and bring to a boil and skim.
Put in a dozen clams or oysters, a tablespoonful chopped parsley. Have a lobster (or a half-dozen crawfish) ready boiled and hot; dish the fish on a platter, with the oysters around the edge, and the lobster on top, sprinkled with chopped parsley.
Add a teaspoonful of "kitchen bouquet" to the soup in kettle, and pour over 6 large croutons in a deep dish. Serve a crouton, a piece of fish, one of lobster, some oysters, then a ladle of soup.
This takes the place of both soup and fish in the order of dishes.
An Americanized bouillabaisse built on North Atlantic fish rather than Mediterranean rockfish, served in the classical way with the broth and the solids in separate dishes. It comes together in about forty minutes.
- Don't overcook the shellfishThe clams or oysters go in only after the broth boils; the recipe gives no time, but shucked oysters need only a couple of minutes, until the edges ruffle, and clams in the shell only until they gape. Held longer they toughen.
- A gill of sweet oilA gill is half a cup. "Sweet oil" is plain olive oil, not the peppery extra-virgin kind sold today; a mild or light olive oil is closer to what was meant. Half a cup is correct for the quantity of fish and gives the broth its body.
- A saltspoonfulAbout a quarter teaspoon. Salt the broth again at the end, since a quart of water is added after the initial seasoning.
- Cooking "slowly twenty minutes"This is a covered braise in oil and onion with almost no liquid, over low heat. Firm fish holds up, but check at fifteen minutes; the halibut should just flake and will finish in the hot broth.
- The fishHalibut is now expensive and haddock is sometimes scarce. Any two firm white fish work, one lean and one flakier, cut into thick slices rather than small cubes so they survive being lifted out whole.
- Kitchen bouquetA commercial caramel-and-vegetable browning liquid, still sold in the same form. It adds colour and a savoury note; a teaspoon is plenty, and the dish is fine without it.
- CroutonsNot the small cubes of modern usage. These are thick slices of stale bread, fried in oil or dried out in a low oven, one per bowl, meant to sit under the broth and soak.
- Yield and serviceSix large croutons signals six servings. Bring the platter of fish and lobster and the tureen of broth to the table together and assemble each bowl, which is the point of the dish.