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Bisque of Shad Roes
Cut in half-inch pieces two shad roes of about three-quarters of a pound each and keep on plate until required.
Heat one ounce butter in a large saucepan, add one each finely sliced carrot and white onion, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bay leaf and one clove; gently brown ten minutes, then add the shad roes; mix well with wooden spoon and cook ten minutes, then sprinkle over two and a half ounces flour; mix two minutes, moisten with two and a half quarts boiling water, season with a heavy teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and one saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix well while boiling for three minutes, then let gently boil forty-five minutes; add one pint cold milk, let cook fifteen minutes more; dilute two egg yolks with one gill cream, juice of half a lemon and two tablespoons sherry; add to the soup, mix while heating for five minutes, but do not allow to boil; add half ounce good butter in small bits, mix well, remove, press bisque through a sieve into a basin, then through a cheesecloth into a soup tureen and serve.
A Delmonico's-style bisque built on a mirepoix, a roux and a final egg-and-cream liaison. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are large and the last five minutes decide whether it succeeds.
- The liaison is the hingeOnce the yolks, cream, lemon and sherry go in, the soup must be held below a simmer — about 170-180F. A single boil will scramble the yolks and no amount of sieving will fully rescue the texture.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of cayenne is a half teaspoon — assertive but not unreasonable in two and a half quarts. Two and a half ounces of flour is a generous half cup, nearer two-thirds.
- YieldTwo and a half quarts of water plus a pint of milk reduces to roughly two and a half quarts of finished soup, or eight to ten servings. Halve everything for a household batch; the proportions scale cleanly.
- Preparing the roesShad roe comes in paired lobes joined by a membrane, and each pair runs close to the three-quarter pound called for. Separate the lobes and cut across them; the membrane is what holds the eggs together, so do not strip it before cooking or you will lose grain into the pot.
- Chervil and the aromaticsChervil is worth seeking out for its faint anise note, but flat-leaf parsley with a pinch of tarragon stands in acceptably. "Gently brown ten minutes" means soft and lightly coloured, not caramelised — a dark mirepoix will muddy the pale colour the bisque is after.
- Double strainingThe sieve breaks down the roe and vegetables into the body of the soup; the cheesecloth catches the fine grit of egg membrane and any flour lumps. Skipping the second pass leaves a texture that reads as sandy rather than silky. Press hard on the sieve — much of the body comes from the solids.
- The finishing butterBeating in the butter in small bits, as the recipe directs, is what gives the bisque its gloss. Here it goes in at the very end, just before the pot is taken off the heat, and the soup is strained and served at once.
- SourcingShad roe is a short spring season on the American East Coast and rarely appears frozen in good condition. Where it cannot be had, the method works with any firm fish roe, though the flavour will be milder and the colour lighter.
"Bisque" was earlier used for thick, strained soups of shellfish or of game birds, the shells or bones pounded and pressed through a sieve to give body — the double straining here echoes that technique, applied to roe rather than crayfish. Shad, an anadromous fish that runs up Atlantic rivers each spring, was abundant enough in nineteenth-century America to be treated as cheap food, though the roe was valued more highly than the flesh, and it appeared on expensive spring menus in New York by the period of this book. The recipe's structure — mirepoix, roux, long simmer, then a liaison of yolks, cream and sherry — is classical French practice, of a piece with the French-trained kitchens of that era's grand American restaurants. Shad runs have declined sharply since, and the roe is now a brief and comparatively expensive seasonal item.