680—Velouté d’Éperlans

Prepare a thin panada with one pint of boiled milk and two and one-half oz. of crumbled bread. Season with a pinch of salt and a very small quantity of mignonette. Also stew gently, in one oz. of butter, two tablespoonfuls of chopped onion, two and one-half oz. of fillets of smelt, one-half lb. of fillets of sole, or the meat of a dory, and the juice of the quarter of a lemon.

Add the fish, stewed in butter and pounded, to the panada, together with one-half pint of ordinary thin velouté.

Rub through tammy; heat; season with a very little cayenne, and finish the whole, when dishing up, with an ordinary leason and one and one-half oz. of butter.

N.B.—1. In view of the decided flavour of the smelt, and the really disagreeable taste it imparts to a preparation which contains overmuch of it, its flesh should never exceed the proportion of one-third of the required quantity of fish. The remaining two-thirds should be supplied by a fish of neutral flavour, such as the sole or dory, both of which are admirably suited to this purpose.

2. The velouté d’éperlans should, like almost all fish veloutés, be prepared as quickly as possible, and at the last moment. The process should not last longer than thirty minutes, for, if there be any delay, the preparation will turn and lose its flavour.

3. For this soup I elected to use a panada as the thickening element, instead of a fish velouté, the reason being that, were the latter used, the taste of fish would in the end be too pronounced.