SC - Compleat Angler part 1
Christina van Tets
IVANTETS at botzoo.uct.ac.za
Tue Mar 3 09:57:51 PST 1998
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
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