Stock For Brown Or White Fish Soup

Take a pound of skate, four or five flounders, and two pounds of eels; clean them well, and cut them into pieces; cover them with water, and season with mace, pepper, salt, an onion stuck with cloves, a head of celery, two parsley roots sliced, and a bunch of sweet herbs. Simmer all together in a stew-pan closely covered for an hour and a half, then strain it off for use. If for brown soup, first fry the fish brown in butter, and then proceed as above. It will not keep more than two or three days, and is best used quite fresh.

Salmon Soup

Take a fowl or an equivalent piece of veal, a piece of lean ham, a few anchovies, and half a pound of salmon; put them all together in a stew-pan, with a piece of fresh butter, on the fire; let it stew for half an hour, taking care it does not brown; add three quarts of water, and skim well; add to it a head of celery, two or three onions, a little parsley, two or three cloves, and a little allspice and white pepper; let it boil an hour and a half, and strain it through a lawn sieve; then take a pan with a bit of butter and a spoonful of flour, stir them together till it comes to a light brown, then add the stock and stir till it boils; take care and skim off all the butter; now stir in a piece of salmon, previously boiled, pounded, and rubbed through a tammy with a little cream, and if you have it, some lobster spawn, which gives it a fine colour. Have ready a slice of salmon, boiled quick in water; cut it in small pieces, and add it to the soup before you serve it up.

Soup A La Melton Mowbray

Fillet two middling-sized haddocks with the skin on; lay them on a buttered saute-pan on which you have previously sprinkled six finely-chopped eschalots, a tablespoonful of minced parsley, and a pinch of finely-powdered mace. Take the heads, bones, and trimmings, and set them in a saucepan over the fire for a few minutes, and then add two quarts of good stock; simmer for half an hour. Blanch and beard fifty oysters; add the liquor to the stock, and the oysters to the fillets; thicken the soup with roux, and, when well skimmed and clarified, add it to the fillets previously slightly fried. Let it boil five minutes; add half a pint of Madeira or dry sherry, the juice of half a lemon, and season with cayenne to taste. When haddocks cannot be procured, soles or whitings do as well. It is also excellent made with cod-sounds, well soaked and blanched, instead of fillets of fish, and cod-fish used for the stock.

Cod's-Head Soup

Make half a gallon of strong stock as follows: - Take two pounds of beef, half a knuckle of veal, and a pound and a half of lean ham, two large onions stewed in butter, with a little gravy to keep them from turning brown. Let it boil up, then add a bunch of sweet herbs, marjoram, thyme, and basil, two bay-leaves, a small handful of parsley, and the peel of half a lemon. Let it stew gently till the herbs are tender, then pass it through a tammy. Now take half a bottle of white wine, the eighth of an ounce of cloves, and the same quantity of black pepper, the eighth of a pound of anchovies, and a quarter of a pint of mushroom ketchup; stew all these together slowly for a quarter of an hour, strain it, and add the liquor to the stock. Season with a little cayenne pepper and salt, and thicken with a little roux. Have ready a large cod's head stewed in a pan with a little stock till all the meat comes from the bones. Add this fish and the gravy it was stewed in to your soup, and let it boil up, with forced-meat balls and little eggs thus prepared: - Take half a pound of cod, six large oysters, three anchovies, and a quarter of a pound of suet; season highly; add a few bread crumbs and one egg, and make into balls.

The little eggs are made by beating three hard-boiled yolks of eggs in a mortar to a paste with the yolk of one raw egg. Roll into small balls, and throw them into boiling water for two minutes.