No. 328

Mussel Soup a la Vigo

Potage de Moules a la Vigo

For Ten Persons.—Take two ounces or one medium sized onion, cut it in one-eighth of an inch squares, and fry brownless in some butter, add to this sixty medium mussels previously cooked in very little water and white wine (no salt), parsley, thyme and bay leaf; when the shells open they are done, remove them from the shells; from each one remove the black and nervous part, being careful not to break them while doing so. Strain the broth, let it settle so as to be able to pour off the clear top, put a little of the broth with the mussels and keep them warm. Put the rest of the broth in a saucepan with two quarts of thickened lean fish stock (No. 195). Boil and despumate for ten minutes, then thicken with six egg-yolks, diluted in half a pint of cream and four ounces of fine butter. Put into the soup tureen four ounces of mushrooms cut in small Julienne, also the mussels; pour the boiling soup over and serve.

← No. 327 Mullagatawny Soup, Indian Style Soups & Broths No. 329 Mutton a la Cowley and Mutton Hochepot →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French liaison soup from Ranhofer's The Epicurean, written for a professional brigade with a stockpot already going. The hinge is the finish: once the egg yolks go in, the soup must not boil again.

The liaisonSix yolks with cream and butter will curdle if the soup returns to a boil. Temper the yolk-cream mixture with a ladle of hot soup, stir it back in off the heat, and hold the pot at 175-180F until it coats a spoon. Note that the text as written still calls for "boiling soup" to be poured over at service; it is safer to read that as meaning very hot rather than actually boiling.
"Thickened lean fish stock (No. 195)""Lean" here means made without meat or fat; "thickened" implies a stock bound with flour, in effect a fish veloute, though the cross-referenced recipe is not given on this page. Two quarts of good fish fumet whisked into a blond roux made from about 2 oz butter and 2 oz flour will give comparable body.
"Despumate"To skim the scum and fat that rise as the liquid boils. Ten minutes of gentle boiling with the surface skimmed clean is what is being asked for; it clarifies the base before the yolks go in.
The "black and nervous part"The dark rim of mantle and the tough byssus, or beard. Pinch the beard away and trim any gritty dark edge, leaving the plump body whole.
Mussel quantitiesSixty medium mussels is roughly 3 to 4 lb in the shell. Discard any that stay shut after steaming, and any that were gaping and would not close before cooking.
SaltThe direction to steam the mussels with no salt is deliberate -- the liquor is already saline, and it is reduced into the soup. Season only at the very end, after the mushrooms and mussels are in.
GritStraining and settling the mussel broth is not optional. Pour off the clear top and leave the last spoonful of sediment behind, or the whole tureen will be sandy.
MushroomsFour ounces cut in fine julienne go into the tureen and are heated by the soup poured over them; the recipe does not say whether they are raw or already cooked, and Ranhofer often uses cooked or preserved mushrooms. Button or cremini both work; slice them thin enough to soften in the minute before service.
YieldStated for ten. The two quarts of stock plus mussel broth, cream and butter come to roughly two and a half to three quarts, about a cupful per person; as a modern first course it will stretch to six to eight more generous servings.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertory set down in print, with several thousand numbered items cross-referenced to one another -- hence the bare pointer to "No. 195" for the fish stock. The "a la Vigo" tag appears to point to the Galician port of Vigo, a major shellfish harbour of Atlantic Spain, though what the label signified in period kitchens is not clear from the recipe itself; the technique here -- steaming the shellfish in wine with parsley, thyme and bay, then binding the strained liquor with yolks, cream and butter -- is standard French practice, the same liaison that finishes a billi bi or a sauce poulette. Mussels were abundant along the American northeast coast, though little commercialised there in the 1890s; the expense in this soup lies in the six yolks, the half pint of cream and the four ounces of butter rather than in the shellfish.