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Bisque of Smelts, Trouville
Cut off heads and tails from eighteen medium-sized fresh smelts, split in two through backs and remove spinal bones. Keep filets on a plate and place trimmings in a saucepan with an extra pound very fresh whitefish bones. Add also a sliced onion, two sliced leeks, two branches parsley, a sprig thyme, bay leaf and two cloves. Moisten with two quarts water and a half gill white wine, season with a heavy teaspoon salt, let slowly boil for forty-five minutes, strain broth through cheese cloth into a vessel and keep hot. Open fifteen very fresh mussels, place them in saucepan with two gills water and boil for five minutes, then add broth (only) to fish broth. Place six mussels on a plate and the balance in a mortar. Cut six half smelts in half-inch pieces, add to plate with the six mussels, then add balance of smelts to mortar with other mussels and two egg yolks, thoroughly pound to a pulp, remove and keep on a plate. Place in a saucepan one ounce butter and two ounces flour, stir on fire while heating for one minute, pour in fish stock, then briskly mix until it comes to a boil and let cook for fifteen minutes. Mix in little by little the fish puree, sharply mix while adding, season with two saltspoons cayenne pepper, a saltspoon grated nutmeg, pour in a gill cream, mix well, let boil for eight minutes, remove and pass bisque through a cheesecloth into soup tureen. Poach the pieces of mussel and smelt in a saucepan with half gill white wine for six minutes, add to soup tureen, lightly mix and serve.
A classic fish fumet thickened with a white roux and finished with a pounded fish-and-mussel purée. It is straightforward work, but the measurements are Edwardian and the pounding step assumes a mortar and a strong arm.
- UnitsA gill is 4 fl oz (half a cup), so a half gill is 1/4 cup and two gills is one cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, making the seasoning 1/2 teaspoon cayenne and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg — assertive but not extreme in two quarts of stock.
- SmeltsEighteen medium smelts is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb whole. They are still sold whole and frozen at many fish counters; if unavailable, small whiting behave much the same. Buy them whole so you get the heads and frames for the stock.
- Cut the stock timeForty-five minutes is far longer than fish bones want. Modern practice simmers a fumet 20-25 minutes, because after that the bones give up bitterness and glue rather than flavour. Keep it at a bare shiver, not the "slow boil" of the original.
- MusselsScrub and debeard them, discard any that stay open when tapped, and discard any that refuse to open after cooking. Five minutes is ample; the liquor they release is the point, and the original is right to strain it into the fumet rather than adding the shells.
- The mortarA food processor or blender does in thirty seconds what the mortar does in ten minutes. Purée the raw smelt fillets, the nine mussels and the two yolks together, then work the paste into the hot soup a spoonful at a time off a hard boil, whisking, or the yolks will scramble into threads.
- Roux ratioOne ounce butter to two ounces flour is a dry, flour-heavy roux — cook it the full minute so it does not taste raw. Two quarts of stock against 2 oz flour gives a thin, pourable bisque, which is correct here; the body comes from the fish purée, not the flour.
- The final strainingPassing the bisque through cheesecloth is what separates this from a chowder. Push it through with a ladle into the warmed tureen, then add the poached garnish so the pieces of smelt and mussel are the only texture in the bowl.
- Garnish timingSix minutes in wine is too long for half-inch pieces of smelt and already-cooked mussels. Two to three minutes at a bare simmer keeps the fish in pieces rather than shreds and the mussels tender rather than rubbery.
- YieldTwo quarts of stock plus cream and purée serves eight to ten as a first course. It is a soup for the start of a meal, not a main dish.
Trouville-sur-Mer, on the Calvados coast of Normandy, was both a working fishing port and a fashionable sea-bathing resort in the nineteenth century, and its name attached itself to a family of restaurant dishes built on Channel fish and mussels — a geographic tag in a French menu name often signals the source of the seafood rather than a local family recipe. Smelts (éperlans) ran in great numbers in the estuaries of northern France and were cheap enough to be fried by the plateful, so working them into a bisque was a way of dressing up a humble fish. Bisque had earlier denoted a rich soup — in its oldest form built on pigeon and game, later on crayfish or lobster pounded to thicken it; by the time of this book the word had loosened towards any smooth, cream-finished purée soup, and the pounded-fish-and-egg-yolk liaison here is the older technique surviving under the newer name. The recipe's insistence on "very fresh" appears twice, which tells you something about the state of fish supply in the kitchens of the period.