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Bisque of Anchovies
Place in a saucepan, finely sliced, one carrot, one white onion, two leeks, two branches each celery and parsley, one sprig thyme, one bay leaf and one clove; pour in two quarts and a half water, let boil thirty minutes, then add one pound clean raw fish bones and half teaspoon paprika and let boil thirty minutes longer. Mix in another saucepan one ounce butter with two and a half ounces flour, heat it for two minutes, strain fish broth through a Chinese strainer into this roux, add one and a half pints milk, mix with wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, let boil thirty minutes longer, then add, little by little, two ounces anchovy paste and two gills cream, mixing meanwhile; boil five minutes, remove and strain through a cheesecloth into a hot soup tureen; cut six anchovies in oil in very small pieces, add to the bisque, lightly mix and send to table.
A classic fish velouté thickened with roux and finished with anchovy — the method is sound, but the timings assume a coal range where a pot could sit at a bare simmer for an hour without attention.
- Salt last, or not at allAnchovy paste and oil-packed fillets carry all the salt this soup needs. Season nothing until the paste is in and you have tasted; over-salting here cannot be undone.
- Two gills of creamTaking these as US measures, a gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup, and a pint and a half of milk is three cups. (Under imperial measure a gill is 5 fl oz and the quantities run somewhat larger.)
- Chinese strainerA chinois: the tall conical fine-mesh strainer. A fine sieve does the job, and the final pass through cheesecloth catches whatever slips by.
- The fish bonesUse frames and heads from lean white fish — cod, sole, halibut, snapper. Oily fish (salmon, mackerel, bluefish) turns the broth bitter and rank. Rinse the bones well and remove any gills or blood.
- Watch the milk stageThirty minutes of boiling after the milk goes in will scorch on a modern thin-bottomed pan and can break the sauce. Hold it at a lazy simmer in a heavy pot, stirring at intervals; the long cooking serves to cook out the raw flour and reduce the liquid.
- Anchovy paste off the boilAdd the paste and cream over low heat and stir until smooth. Hard boiling after the cream is in encourages the fat to separate and dulls the anchovy flavor, which is volatile.
- The garnish is not cookedThe chopped anchovies go into the tureen at the end and are only warmed through. They are meant to stay distinct against the smooth base.
- YieldRoughly two and a half quarts of finished soup, which serves eight to ten as a first course.
"Bisque" in the older professional kitchens did not mean tomato soup with cream; it meant a rich strained shellfish or fish soup, and one traditional explanation traces the word to Biscay, the bay whose fisheries supplied it, though the origin is genuinely unsettled. By the time books like this were compiled for American households, the term had loosened to cover any velvety seafood potage built on a roux and finished with cream. The anchovy is doing the work of a seasoning rather than a main ingredient; anchovies and anchovy paste were staple pantry flavorings in English and Continental cooking long before bottled fish sauces returned to Western kitchens. The recipe's structure, with its bouquet of carrot, leek, celery, thyme and bay simmered first and the fish bones added only for the last half hour, follows French restaurant practice: aromatics have time to give, fish bones turn muddy and glue-like if pushed too far.