SC - Fish at Feasts

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Craig Jones. wrote:
> 
> >Beatrix asks:
> >
> > IS there any period recipes using catfish? )
> >
> >Actually, I think catfish is New World, but it sure is good.
> Wondering if
> >any of the old world fishes might be similar enough in flavor and
> texture
> >to substitute? Anybody have a clue?
> >
> >Phlip
> 
> Maybe another bottom dwelling mud sucker, perhaps loach which I've
> seen in a few period sources here and there.

Bottom-dwelling, maybe, but mud-sucker generally applies more to carp-type
fish, which catfish are not.

Loaches, now, are pretty similar to catfish: scaleless, with large heads and
mouths, and whiskers or barbels. The fish that Walton refers to as a bullhead
looks somewhat like an American bullhead catfish (several species of the genus
Ictalurus), but apparently is not, unless it is now extinct in Europe. 

A.J. McClane's "Complete Encyclopedia of Fish Cookery" says that there is only
one actual European catfish, Siluris glanis, commonly known as a wels. What
language this is supposed to be in is not clear, but McClane clearly states
that while there is a fish known as a katfische in German, it is a marine
wolffish related to wrasses.

I suspect American bullheads were called bullheads by European settlers in the
New World who thought they had some resemblance, in one way or another, to the
European fish. This isn't unprecedented: in Pennsylvania walleyes used to be
called salmon because they were cheap, plentiful, and occupied the same
socio-economic niche (i.e. primarily a food for servants and lower middle
classes) as the salmon did in Europe at the time many European settlers
arrived in PA. This same fish is called a walleyed pike (it isn't even
remotely like a pike, except it swims and has scales) in the Northern MidWest
of the U.S., and, I think, is commonly known as a yellow pike in Canada. It
is, in fact, a type of perch.

Loach recipes might do very well using catfish, as a matter of fact, but I
don't think there are too many fish recipes that were considered to be
immutably for a specific species of fish. Many specify several types of fish,
maybe on the assumption you will have access to one or another of them.     


Adamantius

Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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