Consuming Interest
Souping it Up
By ELIZABETH DAVID
CURIOSITY rather than much hope of joy impels me from time to time to try some of the many tinned lobster bisques
and other soups made from shell fish and crus- tacea which are now on the :narket. The most disappointing to date has been Lusty's scampi soup (ingredients: scampi, milk, butter, edible fat, wheatflour, cornflour, onions, tomatoes, salt, sodium glutamate, herbs and spices, made up to bulk with scampi stock); from the firm which puts out such excellent turtle soup one expects something a little better than this; and a fine, fine boob they've made of the label, too, translating scampi soup—for whose benefit? --into bisque d'ecrevisses, which is just what it, alas, is not, since ecrevisses are fresh- water crayfish and these little creatures differ vastly both biologically and in flavour from the scampo, which is simply the Venetian dialect name for nephrops norvegicus—in English Norway lobster or Dublin Bay prawn, and in French langoustine. Nearly all the sauces, soups, bisques, purges now so often made from lobster, langouste and other salt-water crustacea were evolved with freshwater crayfish; and until one has tasted these dishes made from the ingredients originally used one may think it a matter of no account to substitute lobster or one or other variety of prawns for river crayfish; having once eaten such a dish as pouter au coulis decrevisses as cooked by M. Gaertner at his inn, Aux Armes de France at Ammerschwihr in the Alsace wine country, or Madame Barattero's pain decrevisses, sauce Cardinale at the Hotel du Midi at Lamastre in the Ardeehe, one realises most forcibly that there are some things in cooking which it is futile to try to reproduce unless you have the exact and correct ingredients, not to mention patience, artistry and skill in ex- ceptional degrees. The concentrated flavours and aromas of these crayfish dishes are very rich and strong and yet have incomparably more finesse than anything made from a lobster, while the langoustine is as an innocent sprigged muslin to the swishing silk of the freshwater crayfish.
It is instructive that the best of the tinned lobster soups, including several of French, English and American origin which I have come across, is that put up by Bentley's, the famous fish restaurant in Swallow Street, Picca- dilly, and sold from their own premises at 3s. 6d. a tin which, when the cook has lavished her creative powers and a generous amount of housekeeping money on it in the form of brandy, wine and cream, will make a nice first course for two people. Obviously, an establishment specialising in fish is in possession of the necessary knowledge and experience in dealing with tricky cooking problems, plus an unlimited quantity of ingredients already on the premises; and in the case of Bentley's these circumstances pay off. (Although for my taste, there is still too much tomato in their product.) What I find surprising in all this is that none of the fish restaurant chains nor any of the fish- freezing firms or big retail fishmongers should have thought of turning a vast amount of waste material to profitable ' account by evolving a fish soup or perhaps a concentrated broth (and abandoning the bisque dream) in the style of those very excellent Provençal and ether Medi- terranean soupes de poissons which are made from cheap little fish otherwise unusable and cooked with onions, garlic, tomatoes, herbs, saffron and wine to make an aromatic rust-gold stock which is strained and then made more sub- stantial by the addition of pasta, rice or bread croutons, and grated cheese. To be sure, anyone .could make this kind of fish broth at home, and quite cheaply, since an amiable fishmonger will let his customers have fish heads and carcases (those of cartilaginous fish such as turbot, halibut, hake, John Dory, cod, rock salmon are all suitable) for practically nothing, blit I am convinced also that a commercial version on these lines would, if conscientiously made (hope springs eternal), find plenty of customers. There is one such product to be found in London, and it is one of the few tinned soups I ever buy, as a useful emergency store as well as to enrich the fish consommés and broths which I myself make very frequently. This is a 3f oz. tin of concentrated soupe de poissons made by the Marseilles firm of Basso, imported by Guy,. Leonard, of Dean Street, WI. and retailed by the Italian Produce Co. (the shop generally known us King Bomba), 37 Old Compton Street, at 2s. The contents of this beguilingly scruffy-looking. little tin yield sufficient for two good helpings of soup and the producers also recommend it as a stock for a risotto. Ingredients are listed as consomme de poissons frais, coulis de totizates, legumes, huile d'olive. sel, plantes aromatiques, poivre blanc, sal ran pur. It certainly has some- thing of the authentic tang of Marseillais cook- ing, chiefly due, I think, to the saffron, which is a vital ingredient in these fish soups.
Previous page
