this soup any additional flavour you like. The oysters put in whole, may be first run on fine wire skewers, and fried.
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.
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.
To 3 lbs. of eels, cut in pieces, allow three quarts of water; after this has boiled and been scummed, add two rather large crusts of toasted bread, eight blades of mace, three onions, a few whole peppercorns, and a faggot of herbs. Let this boil gently till half wasted, and then serve it with dice of toasted bread. You may add ¼ pint of cream, with a dessert-spoonful of flour, rubbed smooth in it. (For fish forcemeats see in the Index.)
