Melt the remaining oz. of butter, stir in the flour smoothly, add the soup, and stir until it boils. Simmer for 5 minutes, season to taste, and serve.
Time.—1¼ to 1½ hours. Average Cost, 8d. to 10d. without the stock. Seasonable from August to October. Sufficient for 6 persons.
Vegetable Marrow (Fr.: Courge).—This is a species of gourd, belonging to the natural order Cucurbitaceae, which includes the gourds, melons, cucumbers, marrows, etc. It is cultivated as a culinary vegetable. The vegetable marrow contains a large percentage of water, it is not therefore very nutritious, but forms a useful adjunct to flesh foods.
Fish Soups.
138.—BOUILLABAISSE. (A kind of Fish Stew.)
Ingredients.—1 red mullet, 1 sole, 1 whiting, 1 small eel, 1 small lobster, 6 mussels, 1 quart of fish stock, ¼ of a pint of salad oil, ½ a gill (⅛ of a pint) of claret, 3 small tomatoes, 2 small onions, 1 oz. of butter, a bouquet-garni (parsley, thyme, bay-leaf), a clove of garlic, 2 cloves, a pinch of spinach, saffron, cayenne, salt and pepper, a croûte of bread, parsley.
Method.—Slice the onions and fry them brown in the oil. Mix the saffron with a little water; mince the garlic finely; steam the mussels and remove them from the shells; skin and fillet the sole, wash and cut the other fish into pieces convenient for serving. Pour away a little of the oil, add the stock, claret, herbs, garlic, cloves, bouquet-garni, saffron, cayenne, salt and pepper, and bring nearly to boiling point; then put in all the fish and cook slowly for 20 minutes. Meanwhile trim the croûte of bread to the size of the dish, fry golden-brown in hot oil or fat, then fix it firmly in the centre of a deep dish by means of white of egg. Cut the tomatoes ACROSS in halves, squeeze out a little of the juice, and fry them slightly in hot butter. Arrange the pieces of fish on and around the croûte, garnish with the tomatoes and parsley, and serve very hot with some of the liquor, well skimmed and strained, poured round it.
Time.—Altogether, 1 hour. Average Cost, 4s. to 5s. Seasonable at any time. Sufficient for 10 or 12 persons.
Note.—Bouillabaisse can be made of fresh-water fish, but is not so delicious as when made with sea-fish. It is of southern origin, and ought to be a highly seasoned dish. This soup is well-known to all readers of Thackeray by reason of his ballad in which, when visiting Paris as an "old fogey" he recalls his remembrances of younger and more jovial days.
This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is,
A sort of soup, a broth, a brew,
A hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo.
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace;
All these you eat at Terré's tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
