A collection of recipes taken from The Compleat Angler, published 1653, written by Izaak Walton.
NOTE: See also the files: fish-msg, seafood-msg, stockfish-msg, fish-feast-art, feasts-fish-msg, eels-msg, fish-pies-msg.
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NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
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Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:57:51 SAST-2
From: "Christina van Tets" <IVANTETS at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Compleat Angler part 1
Hello! Herewith the first of the recipes from the Compleat Angler:
Book 1, The third day, chapter 3
The Chub, though he eat well thus dressed [they have just eaten one -
CJvT], yet as he is usually dressed he does not. He is objected
against, not only for being full of small forked bones, dispersed
through all his body, but that he eats waterish and that the flesh of
him is not firm, but short and tasteless. The French esteem him so
mean as to call him _un vilain_; nevertheless, he may be so dressed
as to make him very good meat; as, namely, if he be a large chub,
then dress him thus:-
First, scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take out his
guts; and to that end make the hole as little and near to his gills
as you may conveniently, and especially make clean his throat from
the grass and weeds that are usually in it; for if that be not very
clean, it will make him to taste very sour. Having so done, put some
sweet herbs into his belly; and then tie him with two or three
splinters to a spit, and roast him, basted often with vinegar, or
rather verjuice and butter, with good store of salt mixed with it.
Being thus dressed, you will find him a much better dish of meat than
you, or most folk, even than anglers themselves, do imagine: for
this dries up the fluid watery humour with which all chubs do abound.
But take this rule with you, that a chub newly taken and newly
dressed is so much better that a chub of a day's keeping after he is
dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as to cherries newly
gathered from a tree, and others that have been bruised and lain a
day or two in water. But the chub being thus used, and dressed
presently, and not washed after he is gutted (for note, that lying
long in water, and washing the blood out of any fish after they be
gutted, abates much of their sweetness), you will find the chub
(being dressed in the blood, and quickly) to be such meat as will
recompense your labour, and disabuse your opinion.
Or you may dress the chavender or chub thus:-
When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, and
washed him very clean, then chine or slit him through the middle, as
a salt fish is usually cut; then give him three or four cuts or
scotches on the back with your knife, and broi8l him on charcoal, or
wood-coal that is free from smoke, and all the time he is a-broiling
baste him with the best sweet butter, and good store of salt mixed
with it; and to this add a little thyme cut exceedingly small, or
bruised into the butter. The cheven thus dressed hath the watery
taste taken away, for which so many excep against him. Thus was the
cheven dressed that you now liked so well, and commended so much.
But note again, that if this chub that you ate of had been kept till
to-morrow, he had not been worth a rush. And remember that his
throat be washed very clean, I say very clean, and his body not
washed after he is gutted, as indeed no fish should be.
End of how to cook a chub. Are you waiting with baited breath for
the next instalment?
Cairistiona
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:20:59 SAST-2
From: "Christina van Tets" <IVANTETS at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Compleat Angler #2 pike
Compleat Angler, Book 1, Chapter 8, the fourth day
... this direction how to roast him [ie. a pike] when he is caught is
choicely good, for I have tried it, and it is somewhat the better for
not being common; but with my direction you must take this caution,
that your pike must not be a small one, that is, it must be more than
half a yard, and should be bigger.
First, open your pike at the gills, and if need be, cut also a
little slit towards the belly; out of these take his guts and keep
his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet
marjoram, and a little winter-savory; to these put some pickled
oysters, and some anchovies, two or three, both these last whole;
for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not: to these
you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix with
the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted: if the
pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more
than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice: these
being thus mixed with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the
pike's belly, and then his belly so sewed up as to keep all the
butter in his belly, if it be possible: if not, then as much of it
as you possibly can; but take not off the scales: then you are to
thrust the spit through his mouth out at his tail; and then take
four, five or six split sticks or very thin laths, and a convenient
quantity of tape or filleting: these laths are to be tied round
about the pike's body from his head to his tail, and the tape tied
somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit:
let him be roasted very leisurely, and often basted with claret wine
and anchovies and butter mixed together, and also with what moisture
falls from him into the pan: when you have roasted him sufficiently,
you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that ties
him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of; and let him fall
into it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly; and by this
means the pike will be kept unbroken and complete: then, to the
sauce which was within, and also that sauce in the pan, you are to
add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of
three or four oranges: lastly, you may either put into the pike with
the oysters two cloves of garlick, and take it whole out, when the
pike is cut off the spit; or to give the sauce a _haut-gout_ let the
dish into which you let the pike fall be rubbed with it: the using
or not using of this garlick is left to your discretion. - M.B.
This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest
men; and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted
you with this secret.
Cairistiona
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:40:26 SAST-2
From: "Christina van Tets" <IVANTETS at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Compleat Angler #3 carp, eel
Compleat Angler #3: Carp, eel
Carp:
Part/book 1. chap 10, fourth day
But, first, I will tell you how to make this carp, that is so curious
to be caught, so curious a dish of meat, as shall make him worth all
your labour and patience; and though it is not without some trouble
and charges, yet it will recompense both.
Take a carp, alive if possible [aargh - CJvT], scour him, and rub
him clean with water and salt, but scale him not; then open him,
and put him, with his blood and his liver, which you must save when
you open him, into a small pot or kettle; then take sweet marjoram,
thyme, and parsley, of each half a handful, a sprig of rosemary, and
another of savory, bind them into two or three small bundles, and put
them to your carp, with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled
oysters, and three anchovies. Then pour upon your carp as much
claret wine as will only cover him, and season your claret well with
salt, cloves, and mace, and the rinds of oranges and lemons: that
done, cover your pot and set it on a quick fire till it be
sufficiently boiled; then take out the carp and lay it with the
broth into the dish, and pour upon it a quarter of a pound of the
best fresh butter, melted and beaten with half-a-dozen spoonfuls of
the broth, the yolks of two or three eggs, and some of the herbs
shred; garnish your dish with lemons, and so serve it up, and much
good do you.
To cook an eel:
Book 1, chap. 13, the fourth day
And to commute for your patient hearing this long discourse, I shall
next tell you how to make this Eel a most excellent dish of meat.
First, wash him in water and salt, then pull off his skin below
his vent or navel, and not much further; having done that, take out
his guts as clean as you can, but wash him not: then give him three
or four scotches with a knife, and then put into his belly and those
scotches sweet herbs, and anchovy, and a little nutmeg grated, or cut
very small; and your herbs and anchovies must also be cut very
small, and mixed with good butter and salt: having done this, then
pull his skin over him all but his head,, which you are to cut off,
to the end you may tie his skin about that part where his head grew;
and it must be so tied as to keep all his moisture within his skin:
and having done this, tie him with tape or packthread to a spit, and
roast him leisurely, and baste him with water and salt till his skin
breaks, and then with butter; and having roasted him enough, let
what was put into his belly and what he drips be his sauce.
Cairistiona
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:07:51 SAST-2
From: "Christina van Tets" <IVANTETS at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Compleat Angler #4 minnow, trout
More Compleat Angler, this time minnow and trout:
Minnow:
Book 1, chap 18, fifth day
... in the spring they make of them excellent minnow-tansies; for
being well washed in salt, and their heads amd tails cut off, and
their guts taken out, and not washed after, they prove excellent for
that use; that is, being fried with yolks of eggs, the flowers of
cowslips, and of primroses, and a little tansy; thus used they make
a dainty dish of meat.
[In _The Cookery of England_, by Elisabeth Ayrton, another quote is
used, apparently also from this work. I can't remember the exact
wording, and my book is out on loan, but it runs something like 'on
your way home from fishing in the early morning, collect primroses
and cowslips from the fields, and tansy from your garden ...' Maybe
this was just her poetic interpretation of what Walton said? Does
anyone else have Ayrton? Can you throw some light on this? CJvT]
trout:
Book 2, chap 11, third day
Take your trout, wash, and dry him with a clean napkin; then open
him, and having taken out his guts, and all the blood, wipe him very
clean within, but wash him not, and give him three scotches with a
knife to the bone, on one side only. Aftyr which take a clean
kettle, and put in as much hard stale beer (but it must not be dead),
vinegar, and a little white wine and water as will cover the fish you
intend to boil; then throw into the liquor a good quantity of salt,
the rind of a lemon, a handful of sliced horse-radish root, with a
handsome light faggot of rosemary, thyme, and winter savory. Then
set your kettle upon a quick fire of wood; and let your liquor boiul
up to the height before you put in your fish; and then, if there be
many, put them in one by one, that they may not so cool the liquor as
to make it fall. And whilst your fish is boiling, beat up the batter
for your sauce with a ladleful or two of the liquor it is boiling in.
And being boiled enough, immediately pour the liquor from the fish;
and being laid in a dish, pour you butter upon it; and strewing it
plentifully over with shaved horse-radish, and a little pounded
ginger, garnish the sides of your dish, and the fish itself, with a
sliced lemon or two, and serve it up.
A grayling is also to be dressed exactly after the same manner,
saving that he is to be scaled, which a trout never is: and that
must be done either with one's nails, or very lightly and carefully
with a knife, for fear of bruising the fish. And note, that these
kinds of fish, a trout especially, if he is not eaten within four or
five hours after he is taken, he is worth nothing.
- ----------------
Here endeth the collection of recipes which I have found in The
Compleat Angler, published 1653, written by Izaak Walton.
I find it interesting that he specifies good butter about as often as
Chiquart insists on a clean pot. I presume this is a reaction
against poor quality butter, as opposed to differentiating cooking
butter from May butter, which, as I understand, was a medicinal item?
Were oysters likely to be pickled any differently from vegetables or
other fish?
Were anchovies just salted, or was there more done to them than that?
Or were they preserved in brine, rather than dry-salted, being small?
Cheers,
Cairistiona
<the end>