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Soup with Fish Stock
OUILLABAISSE-This famous fish mixture calls for two varieties of fresh fish, together with either oysters or clams. Put one-half cup of olive oil into a large fish-kettle and cook in this, until brown, two finely chopped onions. Add one and one-half pound of haddock and one and one-half pound of either fresh cod or halibut, cut in slices, a couple of slices of lemon, a bay leaf and one large tomato, peeled and cut into quarters. Pour a quart of boiling water over this mixture after it has simmered for ten minutes and let all boil for another ten minutes. Skim, add a dozen small oysters or clams and one tablespoon of chopped parsley. Now put in the meat of a boiled lobster, cut in large pieces, and a teaspoon of caramel, a teaspoon of salt, and half the quantity of pepper. In serving, each portion should include a large crouton, perhaps two inches square, a piece of each kind of fish, a piece of lobster and a couple of oysters.
A New England reading of bouillabaisse, built on haddock and cod rather than Mediterranean rockfish. A few of its instructions reflect an era when fish was routinely cooked well past done.
- The hinge: do not boil the fish for twenty minutesFirm white fish in thick slices is cooked through in six to eight minutes at a bare simmer. Held at a rolling boil for the full time given, haddock and cod will shred into the broth and halibut will turn dry and cottony. Simmer the aromatics and liquid first, then add the fish.
- Oysters and clamsA dozen small oysters need one to two minutes off the boil, just until the edges ruffle. Clams in the shell need five to seven minutes and should be added earlier and discarded if they do not open; the recipe assumes shucked shellfish.
- LobsterThe lobster is already boiled, so it is only being warmed. Add it in the last minute or two, off the heat if the pot is very hot, or the meat goes stringy.
- CaramelNot caramel candy but caramel colouring, a common pantry item of the period: sugar cooked black and let down with water, used to darken soups and gravies. It contributes bitterness and colour, not sweetness, and can simply be omitted.
- Fish-kettleA long, narrow, lidded pan with a perforated lift-out rack, meant for poaching whole fish. A wide Dutch oven or any heavy pot of six quarts or more will do.
- Olive oilHalf a cup is a Mediterranean quantity and correct for the dish; do not cut it, as the oil emulsifying with the broth is what gives bouillabaisse its body.
- No saffron, no fennelThe classic Provencal aromatics are absent, as is the usual rouille. If you want the broth closer to the Marseille original, a pinch of saffron bloomed in the hot liquid is the single most effective addition.
- Yield and servingRoughly six servings. The crouton belongs in the bowl under the fish; fry two-inch bread squares in olive oil or butter and add them at the table so they do not dissolve.
The heading's Ouillabaisse is a printer's mangling of bouillabaisse, the fisherman's pot of Marseille, whose name is generally traced to the Provencal bolhabaissa - boil, then lower - describing the sharp boil that emulsifies oil and broth followed by a drop to a simmer. What appears here is the dish as it reached American cookbooks: the Mediterranean rockfish, saffron, fennel and orange peel that carry the original are replaced by Atlantic haddock, cod or halibut, New England oysters or clams, and boiled lobster, with caramel colouring among the additions. The Butterick book, published by a pattern company for a broad middle-class readership, was in the business of making foreign-sounding dishes achievable with what a fish market in Boston or New York actually stocked, and the substitutions here are a fair record of what that meant.