Halibut Soup
3/4 cup cold boiled halibut 3 tablespoons butter 1 pint milk 1 1/2 tablespoons flour 1 slice onion 1/2 teaspoon salt Blade of mace Few grains pepper Rub fish through a sieve. Scald milk with onion and mace. Remove seasonings, and add fish. Bind with half the butter and flour cooked together. Add salt, pepper, and the remaining butter in small pieces.
A cream soup of the Boston cooking-school type: scalded seasoned milk, a butter-and-flour binding, and cooked fish pushed through a sieve. It comes together in about fifteen minutes once the fish is cooked.
- Do not let it boil after the fish goes inSieved fish held over direct heat turns grainy and the milk is apt to curdle, particularly with the salt added. Keep the pan just below a simmer from the moment the fish joins the milk.
- Blade of maceA blade of mace is one piece of the dried lacy husk that surrounds a nutmeg seed, sold whole in spice shops. If you have only ground mace, a pinch stirred into the milk will stand in for it, though it will not strain out and will cloud the soup slightly.
- Scalding the milkBring the pint of milk with the onion slice and mace to the point where bubbles rim the pan, then take it off and let it stand ten minutes or so to draw out the flavour before straining. Longer standing gives a stronger onion note.
- Sieving the fishThree-quarters of a cup of cold flaked halibut rubbed through a fine sieve is tedious by hand; a food processor or a stick blender with a little of the hot milk does the same work. Pick out skin and any bones first.
- The butter dividedHalf the butter means about 1 1/2 tablespoons, cooked with the 1 1/2 tablespoons flour into a pale roux to thicken the milk. The remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons goes in cold, in small pieces, off the heat, for gloss and richness.
- HalibutAny firm white fish works, but if you are buying specifically, Pacific halibut is the sustainable choice; Atlantic halibut stocks are depleted. The recipe was plainly written to use up fish left from a previous meal.
- YieldRather more than a pint of finished soup, which is two generous cups or a first course for three. It thickens on standing and will want thinning with a little hot milk if reheated.