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Red-Snapper Soup
Bring a quart of white stock to a boil. Mince finely 2 cupfuls of cold cooked fish, which has been freed of skin and bones, and stir into the stock. Add salt, pepper, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and a great spoonful of butter. Heat a cupful of milk of boiling, then thicken with a white roux and half a cupful of fine cracker crumbs. When the fish and stock have cooked for five minutes, stir into the thickened milk, and serve.
A quick fish soup built on leftovers rather than a whole fish, thickened two ways at once with roux and cracker crumbs. It comes together in about fifteen minutes once the stock is hot.
- White stockA mild veal or chicken stock, unbrowned and lightly seasoned. Fish stock works and gives a more pronounced flavour; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will overwhelm the snapper.
- The fishTwo cupfuls of cooked red snapper is roughly 3/4 lb of cooked flesh, or a little over a pound raw. Any firm white fish substitutes cleanly. Flake rather than mince if you want texture in the finished soup.
- "A great spoonful"Most likely a heaped rather than a level spoonful; call it a generous tablespoon of butter, though the measure is imprecise.
- White rouxEqual weights butter and flour cooked together without colouring, about 1 tablespoon of each for a cup of milk. Cook it a minute or two before adding liquid so the soup does not taste of raw flour.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker meal was made from plain soda or water crackers, much less salty and unseasoned compared with modern crackers. Finely crushed saltines are the closest supermarket equivalent; reduce the added salt accordingly.
- Keep it below a boilOnce the fish goes in, the stock should barely tremble. Cooked fish reheated at a rolling boil breaks into fibres and turns dry, and the milk is more likely to curdle against acid or salt.
- Order of operationsThe thickened milk is combined with the fish and stock at the very end and served straight away. Held on the heat, the cracker crumbs keep swelling and the soup goes to paste.
- YieldA quart of stock, two cupfuls of fish and a cupful of milk come to roughly six or seven cups; four to six as a first course.