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Bisque, Mariniere
Place in a saucepan twelve medium, fresh opened oysters, four large freshly opened hard clams, twelve uncooked shelled shrimps, twenty-four freshly opened raw mussels, half a pound fresh whitefish cut in small pieces, four branches parsley, two branches chervil, a sprig thyme, two bay leaves, two cloves, one and a half teaspoons salt, two saltspoons white pepper, a saltspoon greated nutmeg, half pint white wine, one and a half quarts water, cover pan and let boil thirty minutes.
Mix in a saucepan one ounce butter with two and a half ounces flour, heat for a minute, strain broth into pan and continually stir until it comes to a boil. Finely chop all the different fish and add to boiling soup with a pint milk, mix well and boil for twenty minutes. Dilute two egg yolks with a half gill cream and a half ounce butter and add to soup, mix while heating for three minutes, strain soup through a Chinese strainer into tureen and serve with a plate of bread croutons separately.
A grand French-style shellfish bisque built in three stages: a court-bouillon of mixed seafood, a roux-thickened broth, and an egg-and-cream liaison at the end. The technique is sound, but the timings belong to an era when soup was expected to be smooth rather than tender.
- The liaison is the hingeOnce the egg yolks, cream and butter go in, the soup must not boil or the yolks will curdle into threads. Hold it below a simmer, around 170-180F, for the three minutes given, stirring constantly.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon and the nutmeg is a quarter. A gill is half a cup, making the half gill of cream a quarter cup.
- Chinese strainerA chinois: the conical fine-mesh strainer. A fine sieve works, and pressing the solids through with a ladle gives a fuller body than simply letting it drip.
- The cooking timesThirty minutes of boiling followed by twenty more will render the shellfish tough. In practice, simmer the seafood only until opaque, five to eight minutes, lift it out, then let the broth continue to build flavour for the remaining time before the fish is chopped and returned near the end.
- Buying the shellfishClams and mussels should be tightly closed or should close when tapped; discard any that stay open. Twenty-four mussels is roughly a pound, and "hard clams" here means quahogs or cherrystones.
- WhitefishThe term may mean the freshwater Great Lakes whitefish or simply any white-fleshed fish; the recipe does not specify. Any firm, mild white fish, cod, haddock or hake, serves the same purpose in half-pound quantity.
- The rouxOne ounce butter to two and a half ounces flour is a very dry, flour-heavy roux; it will look like damp sand. Cook it a minute without colour, then add the hot broth gradually to avoid lumps.
- YieldRoughly two quarts of finished soup after the long boiling, enough for six as a first course or four as a meal with the croutons.
"Bisque" is associated with thick shellfish soups thickened with rice or bread and pounded shells, though earlier French usage also covered soups of game birds; it later came to mean any smooth cream soup. The "mariniere" tag is generally read as a sailor's or fisherman's version, the same word used for mussels cooked in white wine with herbs. The mixed catch here, oysters, clams, shrimp, mussels and a white fish, is in keeping with the older practice of building a soup from whatever came off the boat rather than from a single named species. American cookbooks around 1900 borrowed heavily from professional French kitchen practice, and the roux-plus-egg-yolk-liaison structure, the chinois, and the separate plate of croutons all echo restaurant service of the day.