[Sca-cooks] garfish/hornfish/needlefish -- aguja, agulla

[Johnna Holloway]

Under hornfish, I can find this mention in EEBO-TCP:

Acuino, a hornfish or hornbacke.

is in Florio, John, 1553?-1625. A vvorlde of wordes, or Most copious,  
and exact dictionarie in Italian and English, collected by Iohn  
Florio. 1598

and later as

  46. Girrock: Acus major, called elsewhere Horn-Fish and Needle-Fish.
from John Ray's 1674 work A collection of English vvords not generally  
used...

Needlefish are mentioned as part of a list in the 1672 New-Englands  
rarities discovered in birds, beasts, fishes, etc.

It turns up all over the text of The academy of armory in 1688 but no  
recipes!

OED lists these quotations under garfish
c1440 Promp. Parv. 247/1 Horn keke, fysche (S. horne stoke; P.  
hornkek, or garfysshe).
1577 HARRISON England III. iii. (1878) II. 21 Of the long sort are  
congers, eeles, garefish, and such other of that forme.
1611 COTGR., Orphie, the Hornebeake, Hornekecke, Piper-fish, Garre-fish.

Under hornfish
The garfish, Belone vulgaris, so called from its long projecting beak.
a1000 Andreas 370 (Gr.) Hornfisc ple?ode, glad ?eond garsecg.
1599 MINSHEU Sp. Dict., Hornefish, enxarraco, xarraco.
1611 FLORIO, Cornuto..Also the Horne-fish.

Under needlefish
1601 P. HOLLAND tr. Pliny Hist. World I. IX. li. 266 The Horne-beakes  
or Needle~fishes.

Also listed called also green-bone, horn-fish, sea-pike, etc.

We may need to expand the search into variations of the names to find  
English recipes or more mentions.

Johnnae

On Nov 12, 2010, at 2:02 AM, emilio szabo wrote:
regarding that garfish/hornfish/needlefish snipped
>
>
> What I did not find so far are recipes in cookbooks of the time  
> (apart from the
> Viandier recipe in James Prescott's translation).
>
> Thanks again,
>
> E.