Take a quart of White-Wine and a pint and a halfe of White-Wine- Vinegar, two quarts of Water, and almost a pint of Salt, a handfull of Rose-mary and Tyme; the Liquor must boyle before you put in your Fish and Herbs; the Eele with the skins must be put in a quarter of an hour before the Pike, with a little large Mace, and twenty cornes of Pepper.
Keep on the head and fins. Make a force-meat or stuffing of grated bread crumbs, cold boiled ham or bacon minced fine, sweet marjoram, pepper, salt, and a little powdered mace or cloves. Moisten it with beaten yolk of egg. Stuff the inside of the fish with it, reserving a little to rub over the outside, having first rubbed the fish all over with yolk of egg. Lay the fish in a deep pan, putting its tail to its mouth. Pour into the bottom of the pan a little water, and add a jill of port wine, and a piece of butter rolled in flour. Bake it well, and when it is done, send it to table with the gravy poured round it. Garnish with slices of lemon. Any fish may be baked in the same manner. A large fish of ten or twelve pounds weight, will require about two hours baking.
This is an essentially Flemish soup. One uses carp, eels, tench, roach, perches, barbel, for the real waterzoei is always made of different kinds of fish. Take two pounds of fish, cut off the heads and tails, which you will fry lightly in butter, adding to make the sauce a mixed carrot and onion, three cloves, a pinch of white pepper, a sprig of parsley, one of thyme, a bay-leaf; pour in two-thirds of water and one-third of white wine till it more than covers the ingredients and let it simmer for half- an-hour. Then the pieces of fish must be cut an equal size, and they are placed to cook quickly in this liquor for twenty minutes. Five minutes before serving add a lemon peeled and cut into slices and the pips removed. Some people bind the sauce with breadcrumbs grated and browned. You serve, with this dish, very thin slices of bread and butter. For English tastes, the heads and tails should be removed when dressing the dish.
Take a middling turbot-head, pretty well cut off, wash it clean, take out the gills, season it pretty well with mace, pepper and salt, so put it into a deep dish with half a pound of butter, cover it with a light puff-paste, but lay none in the bottom; when it is baked take out the liquor and the butter that it was baked in, put it into a sauce-pan with a lump of fresh butter and flour to thicken it, with an anchovy and a glass of white wine, so pour it into your pie again over the fish; you may lie round half a dozen yolks of eggs at an equal distance; when you have cut off the lid, lie it in sippets round your disk, and serve it up.
Take a little of the liquor that comes from the pike when you take it out of the oven, put to it two or three anchovies, a little lemon-peel shred, a spoonful or two of white wine, or a little juice of lemon, which you please, put to it some butter and flour, make your sauce about the thickness of cream, put it into a bason or silver-boat, and set in your dish with your pike, you may lay round your pike any sort of fried fish, or broiled, if you have it; you may have the same sauce for a broiled pike, only add a little good gravy, a few shred capers, a little parsley, and a spoonful or two of oyster and cockle pickle if you have it.
Many people are of the opinion that the very best method of cooking a shad is to bake it. Stuff it with bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter and parsley, and mix this up with the beaten yolk of egg; fill the fish with it, and sew it up or fasten a string around it. Pour over it a little water and some butter, and bake as you would a fowl. A shad will require from an hour to an hour and a quarter to bake. Garnish with slices of lemon, water cress, etc. Dressing for Baked Shad.--Boil up the gravy in which the shad was baked, put in a large tablespoonful of catsup, a tablespoonful of brown flour which has been wet with cold water, the juice of a lemon, and a glass of sherry or Madeira wine. Serve in a sauce boat.
Any fish is good if dressed in this way. Make a brown sauce, well flouring it with salt, pepper, and dried herbs. Mince and fry a shallot and add it, then a large glass of red wine, a few drops of lemon juice. Cook some fish roe, sieve it, and stir it into the sauce. Take your fish and simmer it in milk and water till cooked, then heat it up quickly in the sauce to serve. [F. R.]
Flour a deep dish, and lay in the bottom a piece of butter rolled in flour. Then sprinkle it with a mixture of parsley, sweet marjoram, and green onion; all chopped fine. Take your black fish and rub it inside and outside with a mixture of cayenne, salt, and powdered cloves and mace. Place skewers across the dish, and lay the fish upon them. Then pour in a little wine, and sufficient water to stew the fish. Set the dish in a moderate oven, and let it cook slowly for an hour. Shad or rock fish may be dressed in the same manner.
Bake three layers of almond tart and flavor it with a wine glass of arrack. When baked, scrape part of the cake out of the thickest layer, not disturbing the rim, and reserve these crumbs to add to the following filling: Boil one-half pound of sugar in one-fourth cup of water until it spins a thread. Add to this syrup a wine glass of rum, and the crumbs, and spread over the layers, piling one on top of the other. Another way to fill this cake is to take some crab-apple jelly or apple marmalade and thin it with a little brandy.
Take a Carp, or other, & put them into a deep Dish, with a pint of white-wine, a large Mace, a little Tyme, Rosemary, a piece of sweet Butter, and let him boyle between two dishes in his owne blood, season it with Pepper and Verjuyce, and so serve it up on Sippets.
