Shrimp Soup
1 qt. oysters 1 pt. shrimps 1 pt. water or veal stock 1 tablespoon Gold Medal flour 1 tablespoon butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains pepper 1/2 cup cream Clean and pick over oysters. Boil liquor with water or stock; skim and strain. Thicken with Gold Medal flour cooked in melted butter, add seasonings. Remove black vein or any shells from the shrimps and cut fine. Add shrimps, oysters and cream to the soup and cook until oysters are plump and edges curl.
A 1910-era shellfish soup that leans on oyster liquor for its body. Almost everything hinges on not overcooking the shellfish at the end.
- The hinge: two minutes, no moreOnce the oysters and shrimp go into the hot base, they need only until the oyster edges ruffle — roughly two minutes over gentle heat. Held longer they toughen and the cream base turns watery as the oysters weep.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A quart is roughly 2 lb of meats plus their liquor, or two 16-oz tubs of shucked oysters from a fish counter. Strain the liquor through a cloth; it carries grit and bits of shell.
- A pint of shrimpsAlso a volume measure of small cooked shrimp — roughly 12 oz. Canned shrimp were widely available by this date, though the instruction to remove "any shells" suggests shrimp bought cooked in the shell. If you start with raw shrimp, they cook in the same two minutes as the oysters, so add them together rather than earlier.
- "Remove black vein"The instruction to take out the black vein and any shells means the shrimp are cleaned before they go into the pot. Cutting them fine is part of that prep, not garnish work.
- Veal stockA neutral, gelatinous background stock that most kitchens no longer keep. An unsalted chicken stock is the closest everyday substitute; plain water, as the recipe allows, is perfectly authentic and lets the oyster liquor speak.
- The rouxOne tablespoon each of flour and butter to a quart-plus of liquid gives a barely-there thickening, not a chowder. Cook the flour in the butter a minute or two before adding liquid or the soup tastes pasty.
- CreamPeriod recipes calling simply for "cream" generally meant something lighter than modern heavy cream. Light cream or half-and-half is the nearer match; heavy cream will make it richer than intended. The recipe adds it with the shellfish — keep the pot below a simmer so it does not break.
- YieldAbout six generous first-course servings. Salt at the very end — oyster liquor varies enormously in salinity and the half teaspoon specified may be too much.
Gold Medal's cook books were promotional literature from the Washburn-Crosby milling company of Minneapolis, which is why a single tablespoon of flour in a shellfish soup is named by brand. The soup itself belongs to a long American line of oyster stews and cream soups, from a period when shucked oysters were cheap, sold by the quart, and shipped inland on ice by rail — a Minnesota flour company could reasonably assume its readers had access to them. The technique of building the soup on the oysters' own liquor rather than a made stock is older still, and is what gives these thin cream soups their character.