This may be made of either meat or fish, the latter for maigre days. If meat, make it the same as for meat soup. If fish be used, it may be cod's head, haddocks, whitings, eels, skate, and all white fish. Boil the fish for stock in two quarts of water, with two onions, some salt, a piece of lemon peel, and a bunch of sweet herbs. Scum carefully, and strain it. If the soup is to be brown, you may brown the fish for stock in the frying-pan before you boil it. Fish stock will not keep.
Lobster Soup.
For this there should be a good stock, of beef, ham, onions, and fresh fish trimmings; strain it and pulp back the onions. Pound the spawn and all the body of the lobster, and stir it smoothly into the soup. Cut all the meat of the claws in small pieces, and put it in the soup also. Add cayenne, white pepper, and a glass of sherry. Or—Having a stock of fish prepared, cut up the meat of the lobster in pieces, and mix the coral with it. Bruise the spawn with a little flour in a mortar, wet it with a little of the strained stock, and mix it by degrees into the rest. Take half of the cut up meat and coral, add oysters, an anchovy, a blade of mace, nutmeg, lemon peel grated, and a little cayenne; pound all together, with the yolks of two eggs, and a very little flour, and make forcemeat balls for the soup; fry or brown them in a Dutch oven, or use them without being browned or fried. Put the balls and the remainder of the cut up meat into the soup, let it simmer half an hour, then serve it, first squeezing half a lemon or Seville orange in the tureen. Madeira may be added.
Oyster Soup.
Veal makes the most delicate stock; it should be strong and clear: put to it a quart of the hard part of fresh juicy oysters, which have been pounded in a mortar with the yolks of six hard-boiled eggs. Simmer for half an hour, then strain it into a fresh stewpan, and put in another quart or more of oysters, trimmed, and washed from their shells, also some mace and cayenne, and let it simmer ten minutes. Beat the yolks of three eggs, take out a little soup in a cup, let it cool, mix it by degrees with the eggs, and stir into the soup, having first drawn that aside from the fire; stir all the time until you send it to table, or it will curdle. Give this soup any additional flavour you like. The oysters put in whole, may be first run on fine wire skewers, and fried.
Another Maigre.
Into four pints of water put five onions fried in butter, some mace, salt, pepper, and what herbs you like, in a small quantity. When this has boiled, and been carefully scummed, put in 1 lb. of fresh butter, a few mushrooms, and a 100 oysters; thicken with vermicelli, and let the soup boil gently a quarter of an hour.
Cray Fish Soup.
If to be maigre, the stock must be made of fish alone; it must be quite fresh, and 3 lbs. will make two quarts; put in an onion or two, and some black and Jamaica peppers. Boil the fish to a mash, and keep straining the liquor till clear. About four dozen cray fish will be enough, pick and stew them in the soup, after it has been strained, till done; add a little cayenne, and the spawn of a lobster pounded, and stirred in to thicken as well as flavour the soup. Prawns, cockles, and muscles, in the same way. It may be made of meat stock, and flavoured to be richer.
Eel Soup.