SC - Compleat Angler part 1

[Christina van Tets]

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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