On Some Ancient Pood

Ingredients

• a pound of butter in a saucepan
• a tablespoonful of flour
• a pint of stock
• three shallots
• one dish of bouillabaisse
• one way of making
• pepper
• cloves
• salt
• cayenne

Directions

1. 3. Cut up tlie eels as above, flour them, and fry them a light brown in butter. Melt a quarter of a pound of butter in a saucepan, mix with it a tablespoonful of flour, add half a pint of stock and the same quantity of claret -or burgundy, a bundle of sweet herbs, two or three shallots, whole pepper, cloves, and salt to taste, and the least bit of cayenne. Let this sauce boil a quarter of an hour, strain it over the eels in a saucepan, add a few button mushrooms, and let the whole stew gently for twenty minutes, squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and serve.

2. Another Gallic prepai’ation of fish, peculiar to the south of France, is the Bouillabaisse, than which there are few dishes more delicious or more difficult to get at. In its own country, especially in Marseilles, most people who can cook at all know how to make it ; but in this country, I am afraid, it is not to be had for love or money, although the excellence of it has been praised by Thackeray, who thus describes it in his ballad of “ Bouillabaisse

3. This bouillabaisse a noble dish is,

4. A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,

5. Or hotchpotch, of all sorts of fishes That Greenwich never could outdo —

6. Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern,

7. Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace,

8. All these you eat at Terres tavern In this one dish of bouillabaisse.

9. I have eaten it in the greatest perfection at the Trois Fr'eres Provenc.aux, in the Palais Royal, where it had to be ordered the day before.

10. The following is one way of making it, which will pro- duce a dish not devoid of merit, although inferior to the production of the Trois Fr'eres — now, to the unspeakable grief of all lovers of good food, unhappily extinct.

11. Take any sort of both fresh and salt water fish, not too large, such as whiting, soles, small haddocks, plaice, mullets, small doreys, and carp, roach, dace,