Catfish Soup

12 small catfish
1 1/2 lb chicken
1 head of celery
Parsley
Sweet majoram
1 qt milk
4 beaten egg yolks

The small white catfishes are the best. Cut off their heads, skin the fish, clean them, and cut them in three.

Cut the chicken into small pieces, or slice it very thin, and scald it two or three times in boiling water.

Chop together a bunch of parsley and some sweet marjoram stripped from the stalks. Put these ingredients into a soup kettle and season them with pepper: the chicken will make it salty enough.

Add a head of celery cut small, or a large table-spoonful of celery seed tied up in a bit of clear muslin to prevent its dispersing. Put in two quarts of water, cover the kettle, and let it boil slowly till every thing is sufficiently done, and the fish and chicken quite tender. Skim it frequently.

Boil in another vessel a quart of rich milk, in which you have melted a quarter of a pound of butter divided into small bits and rolled in flour. Pour it hot to the soup, and stir in at the last the beaten yolks of four eggs.

Give it another boil, just to take off the rawness of the eggs, and then put it into a tureen, taking out the bag of celery seed before you send the soup to table, and adding some toasted bread cut into small squares. In making toast for soap, cut the bread thick, and pare off all the crust.

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