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Waterzoei
This is an essentially Flemish soup. One uses carp, eels, tench, roach, perches, barbel, for the real waterzoei is always made of different kinds of fish. Take two pounds of fish, cut off the heads and tails, which you will fry lightly in butter, adding to make the sauce a mixed carrot and onion, three cloves, a pinch of white pepper, a sprig of parsley, one of thyme, a bay-leaf; pour in two-thirds of water and one-third of white wine till it more than covers the ingredients and let it simmer for half-an-hour. Then the pieces of fish must be cut an equal size, and they are placed to cook quickly in this liquor for twenty minutes. Five minutes before serving add a lemon peeled and cut into slices and the pips removed. Some people bind the sauce with breadcrumbs grated and browned. You serve, with this dish, very thin slices of bread and butter. For English tastes, the heads and tails should be removed when dressing the dish.
A Good Belgian Soup is called creme de saute. Itself one of the most wholesome of vegetables, watercress combines admirably with potatoes in making soup. Wash, dry, and chop finely four ounces of the leaves picked from the stalks, fry slowly for five minutes with or without a thinly-sliced onion, add one pound of potatoes cut in small dice, and fry, still very slowly, without browning; pour in one quart of water or thin stock, simmer gently, closely-covered, for from thirty-five to fifty minutes, rub through a hair sieve, and having returned the puree to the saucepan with a half-teaspoonful of castor sugar, and salt and cayenne to taste, thicken with one table-spoonful of flour stirred smoothly into one breakfast-cupful of cold milk; boil up sharply, and serve sprinkled with watercress.
Two soups run together in one paragraph: the Flemish fish waterzooi, then a watercress-and-potato purée the book calls creme de saute (almost certainly a misprint for crème de santé, "health cream"). Treat them as separate dishes.
- The hinge: the fish goes in last, brieflyThe half-hour simmer is for the heads, tails and aromatics, which become the broth. Twenty minutes of fast cooking will shred fillets of perch or tench; strain the stock, bring it to a bare simmer, and give evenly cut pieces 6-10 minutes depending on thickness. Eel is the exception and wants closer to 15.
- Fish substitutionsCarp, tench, roach and barbel are not supermarket fish in most countries. A mixture is the point rather than the exact species, so use two or three of pike, perch, walleye, catfish, trout or eel, keeping firm and delicate kinds in separate pieces so they can go in at different times. Avoid barbel roe entirely; it is traditionally regarded as purgative and is discarded.
- The liquid ratioTwo parts water to one part dry white wine, enough to more than cover. For two pounds of fish plus trimmings that is roughly a quart of water to two cups of wine.
- "Bind with browned breadcrumbs"Grated breadcrumbs, browned as the recipe says, stirred in off the boil to thicken lightly; the book does not say in what. A tablespoon or two per quart is enough; more turns the broth pasty. Many Flemish versions instead finish with egg yolk and cream, which the book does not mention.
- The lemonPeeled slices with the seeds removed, added five minutes before serving so the broth takes the perfume without going bitter from the pith. Lift them out before serving if you prefer.
- Units in the watercress soupFour ounces of picked watercress leaves is a large quantity of leaf, several bunches' worth depending on their size. A breakfast-cupful is roughly 8-10 fl oz; treat it as one cup of cold milk. Castor sugar is superfine sugar, and ordinary granulated works here.
- Sieve and blenderA hair sieve was a fine horsehair mesh pushed through with a wooden spoon. A blender or food mill does the same work in seconds; pass it through a mesh strainer afterwards if you want the old silky texture.
- YieldThe waterzooi serves four as a main course with the thin bread and butter; the watercress soup makes about five cups, or four modest bowls.
Waterzooi takes its name from Flemish zooien, to boil or seethe — literally "water-boil" — and it belongs to the river towns of East Flanders, Ghent above all, where the Lys and Scheldt supplied the carp, eel, tench and pike that the recipe assumes. The insistence on several kinds of fish reflects how such a dish was actually got: whatever the day's catch or the fishmonger's tank held, cooked in its own broth rather than a sauce. Pollution of the Flemish rivers over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries pushed the freshwater version into the background, and the chicken waterzooi op Gentse wijze most people now meet is the later, richer descendant, usually finished with egg yolks and cream. The aside about removing heads and tails "for English tastes," and the second soup with its castor sugar, cayenne and hair sieve, both point to an English readership.