Just before it is sent to table, sprinkle over the top a handful of little fried fritter-beans. They are made by dropping drops of fritter batter into boiling lard. They will resemble navy-beans, and give a very pleasant flavor and appearance to the soup.
If this pretty addition be considered too much trouble, little dice of fried bread (croûtons) may be added instead. The soup should be rather thick, and served quite hot.
Bisque of Lobsters.
This soup is made exactly like the purée of string-beans, with the veal stock and thickened cream, except that, in place of the string-bean pulp, the soup is now flavored and colored with the coral of lobster, dried in the oven, and pounded fine. This gives it a beautiful pink color. Little dice of the boiled lobster are then to be added. The lobster-dice may or may not be marinated before they are added to the soup, i. e., sprinkled with a mixture of one table-spoonful of oil, three table-spoonfuls of vinegar, pepper, and salt, and left for two or three hours in the marinade. Season the soup with pepper and salt.
FISH.
If a fish is not perfectly fresh, perfectly cleaned, and thoroughly cooked, it is not eatable. It should be cleaned or drawn as soon as it comes from market, then put on the ice until the time of cooking. It should not be soaked, for it impairs the flavor, unless it is frozen, when it should be put into ice-cold water to thaw; or unless it is a salted fish, when it may be soaked overnight.
The greatest merit of a fish is freshness. The secret of the excellence of the fish at the Saratoga Lake House, where they have famous trout dinners, is that, as they are raised on the premises, they go almost immediately from the pond to the fish-kettle. One is to be pitied who has not tasted fish at the sea-shore, where fishermen come in just before dinner, with baskets filled with blue-fish, flounders, etc., fresh from the water.
A long, oval fish-kettle (page 52) is very convenient for frying or boiling fish. It has a strainer to fit, in which the fish is placed, enabling it to be taken from the kettle without breaking. A fish is sufficiently cooked when the meat separates easily from the bones. When the fish is quite done, it should be left no longer in the kettle; it will lose its flavor.
It makes a pleasant change to cook fish “au gratin.” It is a simple operation, but little attempted in America. I would recommend this mode of cooking for eels, or the Western white-fish.