A Cray-fish Soup.
TAKE a gallon of water, add to it boiling, put in it a bunch
of sweet herbs, three or four blades of mace, an onion stuck with
cloves, pepper and salt; then have about two hundred craw-fish,
fave out about twenty, then pick the rest from the shells, save
the tails whole; the body and shells beat in a mortar, with a pint
of peas, green or dry; first boiled tender in fair water, put your
boiling water to it, and straining it boiling hot through a cloth till
you have all the goodness out of it; set it over a slow fire or stew-
hole, have ready a French roll cut very thin, and let be very dry,
put it to your soup; let it stew till half is wasted, then put a piece
of butter as big as an egg into a sauce pan, let it simmer till it
has done making a noise, shake in two tea spoonfuls of flour,
stirring it about, and an onion; put in the tails of the fish, give
them a shake round, put to them a pint of good gravy, let it boil
four or five minutes softly; take out the onion, and put it to a pint
of the soup, stir it well together and pour it all together, and let
it simmer very softly a quarter of an hour; fry a French roll very
nice and brown, and the twenty craw-fish, pour your soup into
the dish, and lay the roll in the middle, and the craw-fish round
the dish.