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Bay-leaf, Thyme, and Parsley
Three ounces of Butter.
Three ounces of Flour.
Three pints of Stock (Fish Stock is best).
One glass of Sherry.
A tablespoonful of Anchovy Sauce.
A tablespoonful of Harvey Sauce.
A little Lemon Juice and Cayenne.
Cut up all the vegetables very small and fry them a light brown in the butter; stir in the flour, mix well; add the stock, stir well till it boils, then set it by the side of the fire to simmer gently for half an hour. Break up the lobster, cut up the meat from the claws into neat pieces, and put them on one side until the soup is finished. Break up the shell, the rest of the lobster and some of the spawn, in a mortar, and put it into the soup, let it all boil for ten minutes, then rub it through a hair-sieve, put it back on the fire, let it boil up, skim it well, add the sherry, Harvey, anchovy, lemon-juice, and cayenne. Put the pieces of lobster and some small quenelles of whiting into the tureen, pour the soup on them, and serve.
This is a classic lobster soup, thickened with a brown roux and finished with the bottled sauces a late-Victorian kitchen kept on hand. The page has been printed from the middle of the ingredient list, so the lobster, the vegetables and the herbs of the title appear only in the method.
- What the ingredient list omitsThe heading supplies the bay leaf, thyme and parsley; the lobster and the vegetables are named nowhere in the text as printed, and no quantities are given for either. The mention of spawn implies a hen lobster; a cooked bird of 1 1/2 to 2 lb and a mixed root-and-onion base are a reasonable modern guess rather than anything the recipe states. Judge by eye against three pints of stock.
- The hinge: the shell goes in, brieflyThe pounded shell and coral are boiled only ten minutes before sieving. Longer extraction turns the soup bitter and muddy, and the coral, which supplies much of the colour, can curdle into grit if it is boiled hard.
- Pounding without a mortarA food processor will break up shell adequately; pulse in short bursts with a ladle of the hot soup, then sieve. Do not use a blender jug you value, and pass everything through a fine conical strainer lined with a double thickness of muslin in place of the hair sieve, since shell splinters are the one thing that must not get through.
- Harvey's and anchovy sauceHarvey's sauce is a discontinued Victorian bottled relish of anchovy, soy, vinegar, garlic and walnut ketchup. Worcestershire sauce is the nearest survivor. Anchovy sauce was a thin, ketchup-like seasoning rather than a paste; if using modern anchovy paste, start with a teaspoon, not a tablespoon.
- "By the side of the fire"This means the coolest part of the range: a bare simmer with barely a bubble, which on a modern hob is the lowest setting with the pan half off the burner. A rolling boil at this stage will break the roux and catch on the base.
- Quenelles of whitingA fine forcemeat of raw whiting pounded with egg white and cream, shaped into small ovals with two teaspoons and poached in salted water or stock at about 170F until just set, three to four minutes. Any firm white fish works. Poach them separately and drain before they go into the tureen.
- The sherry and lemon go in lastThe recipe boils and skims the soup before the sherry, Harvey's, anchovy, lemon juice and cayenne go in, so these are late additions rather than things cooked into it; sustained heat would drive off the sherry's aroma and dull the lemon. Add, taste, and serve.
- YieldThree pints of stock plus garnish serves six as a first course, or four generously.
Lobster soup of this kind sits between two older English traditions: the highly seasoned "lobster sauce" served with turbot, and the pounded-shell bisques taken over from French practice, where the shell rather than the meat does most of the flavouring work. The tablespoon each of anchovy and Harvey's sauce is the giveaway detail of period: British cooks of the 1870s to 1900s are generally said to have reached for bottled compounds freely, and Harvey's, an anchovy-and-soy relish sold commercially from the late eighteenth century onward, appears throughout Victorian fish cookery before it faded in favour of Worcestershire. The garnish of whiting quenelles and neatly cut claw meat, dropped into the tureen so the soup is poured over them at the last moment, marks this as service for a formal table rather than a family one.