Cray Fish Soup

This soup is sometimes made with beef broth, and sometimes with fish, in the following manner.

Take two or three flounders, eels, gudgeons, etc. and set them on to boil in a gallon of cold water; when it is pretty nigh upon boiling, scum it well, and put in a couple of onions, and as many carrots cut to pieces, and some parsley, a dozen berries of black and Jamaica pepper, and about half a hundred cray-fish; take off the small claws, and shells of the tails, and pound them fine, and boil them with your broth about an hour; strain off, and break in some crusts of bread to thicken it, and if you can get it, the spawn of a lobster, (the inside spawn gives the most colour,) pound it and put to your soup, and let it simmer very gently for a couple of minutes, put in your cray-fish, make hot, and send up.

Observations

One of my predecessors recommends "cray-fish pounded alive, as an ingredient in his broth." to sweeten the sharpness of the blood. - Vide Clermont's Cookery, page 5, 8vo. London, 1776.

Prawn, Or Shrimp Soup

Prawns, or shrimps, make an excellent soup done just in the same manner; but there is a small bag in the carcass full of gravel, which must be taken out before you pound them for stock. You use only the tails of the prawn, but the cray-fish, body and all, except the legs and shells.